


Somethings are Just Meant to Be

by luverofralts



Series: Somethings Are Just Meant To Be [2]
Category: Invader Zim
Genre: M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 13:46:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 44,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5166035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luverofralts/pseuds/luverofralts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A repost from 2004 on ff.net</p><p>After an accident kills both Zim and Dib, are they able to finally find happiness and meaning in a new, different incarnation? ZADR</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The flash of light was sudden; pulsating and twisting around the dark basement lab of the Irken invader. An astounding boom followed soon after, though Zim couldn’t be sure if he had actually heard it, or if he had just felt it rip through his body.  
  
Could he still hear? He wasn’t sure. His Irken eardrums were ringing and the world had fallen silent for him minutes ago. It was all so sudden, so unplanned. Somehow, a calculation had gone wrong, a formula had failed....something. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, not like this. Was it supposed to hurt this badly?  
  
The pain overwhelmed his tiny body, each nerve dissolving before his eyes, as the light got brighter, and the heat more intense. There had been times of pain before, but not like this.  
  
Never like this.  
  
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought of the Dib human, knew that he was somewhere in this blinding light, suffering as he was. How had it gotten this far out of control?  
  
A brilliant flash of light. Another blast of heat as the walls of his base began to collapse in on themselves. His beautiful base, destroyed before his very eyes. And for what?  
  
 _He was back in his lab, hours ago, working on his newest plot to rid himself of Dib, and by doing so, coming a step closer to world domination. He remembered his pride, and his ego...always his ego. A containment field to hold the Dib monster prisoner had seemed so simple, so easy. Even he could build one. What could go wrong?_  
  
His eyes shut against the sweltering heat, trying in vain to shield himself from the incoming waves of destruction.  
  
 _They had warned him. Oh, how they had warned him. Prisoner 777 had sent him the materials needed, though he had attached a carefully detailed instruction manual with it. Said it was sensitive. Dangerous. But he was ZIM, and Zim needed no instructions, not when dealing with Dib._  
  
He felt something collide with him, though he was surprised he could still feel at all. He opened his eyes to see it was the Dib. What was left of him anyway.  
  
 _“GIR! No! Those levels cannot fluctuate at all! What are you-”  
  
Dib had screamed, knowing his fate before Zim could even grasp the doom at hand. His amber eyes had had that fear in them; the fear Zim had seen often in soldiers, in wars, in places far away from Earth. It was the fear of death.   
  
He had screamed and then the light had taken him. _  
  
Dib’s eyes were not closed now, nor were they fully open. They hovered in a state of half open, half closed, still revealing the glorious amber that Zim had often admired before. His mouth moved, though Zim could hear no sound, no whisper. Amber became faded and became glassy, his little chest struggling to lift itself to breathe. Dib was dying, and though the alien was too stubborn to admit it, he knew he was too.  
  
The light was close now, too close to watch. Zim looked at Dib’s hazy eyes and saw his bleeding lips move slowly, though the alien would never know what he had said. There was no hatred, no fear left in the boy’s face now, only determination and a glowing peace. How Zim wished he could be as peaceful as the Dib. Maybe it was because Dib's eyes were closing. He couldn't see...couldn't see the all encompassing light headed towards them.  
  
The light soon engulfed him, hiding Dib’s limp form from his damaged eyes, though the Irken soldier could still feel Dib’s small body pressed against his. Zim closed his eyes once more, for the last time, as he held Dib close to him against the conquering light.  
  
 _This can’t be the end, Dib. I won’t let it be. Not like this._


	2. Chapter 2

_Diary,_  
  
_I bought a new telescope today. It isn’t as powerful as I’d like it to be, but it was formerly owned by Professor Membrane, so that has to give it some credibility. I practically stole the thing anyway. After Membrane died last week, his frightening daughter sold it off in a garage sale, for just a quarter! I tried to convince her that it was worth far more than a quarter, but she just glowered at me and growled something about her not giving a damn about any of her brother’s crap. Membrane’s only son died like 17 years ago. If she didn’t care about his stuff, why would she keep it around for so long?_  
  
_Oh well, that’s not my problem. I could care less about some snotty scientific heiress, so long as I have my new telescope. With this, my studies of the left part of the Northern Hemisphere should go far more smoothly. I don’t know what’s out there, or why I would care so much about such a random piece of space, but something inside of me...I can’t explain it. It’s like I was born in the wrong place, to the wrong people, at the wrong time. Though I’ve lived here all my life, Earth seems like such a foreign place to me, full of foreign ideas and customs. My body belongs to this planet, but my soul...it belongs out there, over the stars. Maybe now, with this telescope, I can finally see what’s been calling to me all my life. Maybe, just maybe, there really is a place where I belong. I just have to find it._  
  
_Yours until I can escape,_  
  
_Zimm_  
  
With a sigh, Zimm closed her diary and began the process of preparing herself for skool. It wasn’t as if she wanted to go to skool, but the nightmarish corporate society in which she found herself trapped seemed to demand it of her. Well, if she had to play by their rules, then she’d at least have some fun while doing it. While she excelled in skool, exceeding every expectation her teachers had for her, she also had a terrible record of recklessness. With each skool she attended, her record of destruction had increased. In grade skool, she had flooded the skool by backing up the water pumps during a water fight at recess. To the bafflement of the staff, she had managed to wrestle off her hall pass one day, and had decided to stick it in the backpack of an older student who was leaving the skool ground due to a sickness. The resulting explosion had left the student mildly injured and Zimm suspended.  
  
Hi-Skool was even worse for Zimm. She had no friends, even among the reject group of children who usually sat in the corner of the cafeteria, a fact that seemed to fuel her destructiveness. Skool psychologists blamed a lack of socialization with her peers, and the alienation she seemed to impose on herself as the root of her problems, and brushed her off as being insane. The essays she handed in bordered on treasonous, as every one of them described her newest hair brained scheme for world domination. It was because of her unusual essays that she had to get up so early today. Her previous Hi-Skool had expelled her for entering an essay full of human corpses and laser weasels into the state competition, thus humiliating the skool and jeopardizing their precious funding. As a result, the state had ordered her to switch to a more demanding, and controlled skool, hoping that this would put an end to her insanity. Zimm knew that it wouldn’t, but she had to go along with the courts, and had to learn all that she could about her obviously flawed government, if the world would one day be hers.  
  
Somewhere inside of her, she knew world domination to be her destiny. She was born for it. Sure her career placement test had placed her in a career of food preparation, but some stupid test would never override her dreams. After all, she was Zimm!  
  
She quickly dressed in her usual outfit: a smooth, short, strapless red dress that clung tightly to her body and the formal black elbow length gloves she had picked up at the local mall. Others ridiculed her sense of style, but Zimm had always silenced the jeering with an angry clench of her fist, or a sudden rant about her normalcy.  
  
Normal was the furthest thing from what she was, but somehow, the idiotic people that surrounded her always seemed to buy her stories. Her hair was green naturally, though when compared to the abundance of natural purple hair, it was easily dismissed. Her eyes however, were another story. Zimm’s eyes were not natural, and since her parents had either died or abandoned her long ago, she had no way of using them as a comparison. While they still maintained the shape and abilities of human eyes, Zimm’s were a startling red color, which had prompted much name calling during her childhood. Some thought she was a devil, others a freak. She had always just shrugged it off as a case of pink eye that had gone seriously wrong, which almost everyone seemed to accept.  
  
It was odd how much people did accept about her. They accepted her forged parent notes, and her lame excuses every parent teacher night. In fact, the only thing they didn’t accept about her was her vision of a world under her control. What foolish people.  
  
She felt ashamed to be a part of humanity. Deep down, though she couldn’t explain it, she just knew that she was superior to the rest of her species. It wasn’t because she was more intelligent than the humans surrounding her (though she certainly was) but because of some gut feeling she had. She was Zimm, and she was superior to any human monsters that came her way. Why? She just was.  
  
With that amusing thought, she slipped on her rounded silver backpack, found her knee high boots lying by the front door, and after hurrying them on her feet, she left the house her elusive parents had left her in and headed off for her first day at her new skool.

Dib arrived early to skool the next day, eager to hand in his sociology project as soon as possible. While the rest of his brain dead class had decided to do their project on human society, and families, Dib had tracked the family of Yeti that lived down the street from him for the better part of a month, detailing all of their movements carefully. He had noted their social order, their migrations, and even their financial spending in order to better understand the Yeti way of life.  
  
Studying was in Dib’s blood. Sure, some people called it stalking, but how else was he supposed to monitor the paranormal world around him? It seemed like the more he learned, the less interested people seemed to be about his discoveries, particularity his family.  
  
His father had been a lab technician under the great Professor Membrane, and after the professor’s death, he had taken control of most of the lab work being conducted. The world hailed him as the new Membrane, especially after he had perfected Membrane’s original super toast recipe, though how one could make super toast more super was beyond Dib.  
  
Membrane had without a doubt been his father’s hero, while Dib seemed to be his father’s greatest disappointment. Dib had been born while the great professor was still alive, just a year after the professor’s own son had died in a tragic accident that no one seemed to know much about. Naturally, with his father being as close to Membrane as he was, Dib had been named after Membrane’s dead son as sort of a living memorial.  
  
This Dib resented greatly. He was himself and not some walking eternal flame to the son of a famous professor. Everyone -his father in particular- always pointed out the similarities the Dib bore to his predecessor, which was always guaranteed to drive Dib up the wall. Sure he wanted to be a paranormal investigator like Membrane’s son had wanted to be, and he was considered to be just as crazy as the dead boy, but there were some differences...well, there had to be some somewhere, he was sure of it.  
  
He had gone to the same grade skool as Membrane’s son (his father had made sure of this. Anything Professor Membrane chose for his kids had to be great after all) where each day he had to walk by the memorial statue Membrane had donated to the skool in honor of his son.  
  
Not only were the similarities in their interests and education constantly questioned, but Dib’s appearance was also always being compared to dead Dib. To suit the world’s purposes, not only did Dib have to act like Membrane’s son, but he also had to look the part. Dib’s frustrating hair was black and spiky, though it lacked the signature scythe that the dead Dib had inherited from his father, which he was always quick to point out to those eerie Membrane fans who seemed to have nothing better to do than to squeeze him into someone else’s life.  
  
As much as these references irritated him, they were nothing compared to the greatest insult he had received over the years. Though he constantly fought it, everyone always mused about the supposedly large size of his head. What in God’s name was wrong with humanity? Were they blind? His head wasn’t big!  
  
His father had stepped up to assume Membrane’s position without realizing that the world would expect his son to assume the position that Membrane’s son left behind, which genuinely ticked Dib off. The world, as infinitely stupid as it was, had placed him in an awkward situation that he never asked to be born into, and for that Dib hated the large headed boy he was named after. Sure the Membrane boy hadn’t deserved to die, but it was his fault that the currently alive Dib had to suffer his enormous legacy.  
  
As far as Dib was concerned, Membrane’s son had been just as insane as everyone remembered him. Not much was known about him, as no one had taken the time to notice him while he was alive, save for the green foreign boy that had died with him.  
  
At this, Dib always scoffed. That was the primary, and at times the only, difference between him and dead Dib. There was no green boy in his life, no “alien” to chase after or die with. Membrane’s Dib had been a fool, and one of those crazy paranormal freaks, convinced that anything and everything around him was from space. Dib was convinced that he knew better than the one he was named after, and made it his mission to correct all the fraudulent paranormal sightings, especially wrongful assumptions about foreign children with skin conditions.  
  
That was his mission in life, and his mission today as he proudly handed in his project, before the other students even thought about starting theirs. Sure he had been stalking that Yeti family, but if he had learned anything from his father, it was that any sacrifice was worth the development of scientific study, and to Dib, paranormal investigation was a legitimate scientific field. He’d had his fair share of restraining orders in his 16 years of life, but each one of them had been worth the invaluable information he’d gathered. He just hoped that his teacher would agree with him on that issue, seeing as how his current project had landed him yet another restraining order.  
  
Behind him, the obnoxious bell signaling the start of class rang, and he ran to take his seat for first period. He had English first period, where he sat in the very front row on the far left side. Most teens thought this was because he was trying to suck up to the teacher, but it was really so that he could stare out the window when he found Hamlet or essays to be to overwhelmingly boring.  
  
One by one, his classmates trickled in the room, looking as lifeless and dull as always. It was far too early in the morning for the sleep-deprived teenagers to pretend to enjoy Hi-skool, let alone contribute to a meaningful discussion regarding literature of any kind.  
  
His English teacher, a small but stern woman with short graying violet hair was slightly delayed coming to class, which was odd for an English teacher. Weren’t they like the first teachers to arrive each morning?  
  
The door creaked open slightly after a few minutes of waiting to reveal his teacher, followed by a strange girl he had never seen before. He craned his neck to get a better view of this mysterious girl, but found that she hid herself carefully from his sight behind the teacher. He saw briefly the swish of a red dress as she walked, revealing the slightest bit of skin when the fabric moved.  
  
Standing at the front of the classroom, his teacher cleared her throat ominously and stared coldly at the bored looking teens before her.  
  
“Class, today we have a new student joining us,” she announced, her voice clearly showing her dislike of having another student to grade. She didn’t get paid enough to endure the kids she had as it was. “Her name is Zimm. Zimm? Why don’t you introduce yourself while you’re up here?”  
  
“It’s not like any one’s listening anyway,” Dib sighed, staring around him at the class of drooling morons, too busy listening to their CD players or doodling in their notebooks to notice a new student.  
  
A slender leg appeared from behind the teacher, followed immediately with the rest of the girl’s body. The red dress swirled again as the girl immediately assumed a defensive stance by folding her arms tightly against herself.  
  
Dib stared at her in awe, wishing he could stop staring, but failing. She was...different. There was something not right about this girl, though he had no idea what. Even the way she stood...it bothered him. Something itched at the back of his brain, and he had no way of scratching it.  
  
Where did he know her from? Did he even know her at all? She had green hair, which Dib decided was odd, and when it was pulled back into two high ponytails like it was, it almost gave her the illusion of having two little green bug antennae. And her eyes...Never before had Dib seen another human with red eyes. Never like those. They were chilling...human, yet so obviously not human. What exactly was she?  
  
Zimm cleared her throat importantly, glaring at those who were too busy sleeping to notice her amazingness that should have been apparent.  
  
“Hi,” she began, looking a bit like a trapped rat looking for a way out of a maze. Why did she have to give a speech? Geez. “My name’s Zimm, and despite what people say, I’m perfectly normal, so normal in fact that it’s scary.” Her eyes narrowed as the snores from the back row were getting louder, and interrupting her. “Anyway, leave me alone, and I’ll return the favor...so....yeah. You’re all going to be my slaves one day, ya know.”  
  
The teacher rolled her eyes and began shifting the papers on her desk in an attempt to look busy in case the principal happened to be walking by any time soon.  
  
“Thank you, Zimm. Now take your seat.” Zimm looked irritated, and stubbornly glared at the authority figure before her.  
  
“You flaw,” she insisted. “You didn’t give me a seat, and I just got here. Stupid inferior human.”  
  
Dib’s curiosity was really peaked by then, and somehow he had convinced himself that he had to get to know this mysterious girl. There was something about her, and his mind wouldn’t be able to rest until he knew what it was.  
  
Noticing that the guy in the seat next to him was currently passed out with a pile of drool already beginning to form by his mouth, Dib gave him a quick shove onto the floor, and waved his hand wildly.  
  
“Uh, she can sit here!” he called out, earning a glare from Zimm for his flailing.  
  
The teacher vaguely nodded her consent, and Zimm gingerly stepped over the sleeping body on the floor and took her new seat impatiently.  
  
Dib flashed her a confident, yet friendly smile, ignoring her previous glare.  
  
“My name’s Dib,” he whispered softly. “Have we met before? You seem kind of familiar.” Zimm kept her eyes trained on the blackboard, never once acknowledging the irritating boy beside her. The disgruntled body on the floor moaned in his sleep, causing a very irritated Zimm to give it a swift kick to the side.  
  
“Did you just move here?” Dib asked, ignoring the sudden display of violence before him.  
  
Dib could see the muscles in Zimm’s back clench as she began to grind her teeth. She finally turned to face Dib, training her inhuman eyes on him.  
  
“Leave me alone,” she hissed. “I don’t know you, nor do I have any desire to know you in the future. Inferior large headed human.”  
  
Dib tried not to look crushed at this comment.  
  
“My head’s not big,” he protested softly, his eyes narrowing. “What did you mean when you said that we’d be your slaves one day? Are you like, insane or something?”  
  
Red eyes scorched Dib’s mind as Zimm glowered at him with an intensity he found oddly familiar.  
  
_“Oh, come on! You're not still mad about that whole leaving-you-to-rot thing, are you?"_  
  
Pain blinding him as metal made contact with his precious organs. Violet eyes glaring at him in such annoyed anger.  
  
“Organs...Exploding...”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
Dib shook his head to clear his thoughts, clearly beginning to imagine things. Zimm had long since stopped glaring at him, instead deciding to continue her never ending glare at the chalkboard.  
  
What was that...thing he seen? Had he fallen asleep for a moment, or had a seizure? Those eyes, that girl...what was with that girl? Was she even human?  
  
The idea paralyzed Dib were he sat. What if she wasn’t human? The possibilities were delicious to think about.  
  
She could be a demon, or a vampire; she certainly had the snotty attitude associated with creatures of the night. Could it be? Could an actual paranormal specimen be sitting right next to him? That would explain that sudden twist of reality. She could be projecting a false memory with mind powers!  
  
Dib was practically drooling over the possibilities, something that was beginning to both frighten and annoy Zimm. Raising her hand quickly, she stood and headed for the door before the teacher even had the chance to ask her what she wanted.

 

Zimm ran as far away as she could from the irritating boy in her English class, though she just couldn't understand what exactly he did to her.  
What was with him, anyway? All he did was stare at her, and not in the usual "I really wanna sleep with you" way that guys usually did. That look in his eyes...it was like he was crazy or something.  
  
But if he was crazy, then why did he make her feel this way? It was absurd what she felt, just being near him. Waves of hatred, of frustration, and...attraction? She had known him for, what, ten minutes but somewhere inside of her, she felt like she had known him all of her life.  
  
The same tiny voice in the back of her mind that whispered to her about the stars, seemed to know something about this boy as well, though it seemed unwilling to share with her details of that knowledge. It was like a pressure at the back of her skull, digging away at her brain if she even looked at him, but why? The whispering in her mind that had begun the moment their eyes connected continued without showing signs of stopping and she ran to the only place where she knew she was safe from that odd boy: the girl's bathroom.  
  
Throwing the door open, not even bothering to see if anyone else was in the sterile room with her, Zimm crawled into the corner under the sink and began sniffling into her arms.  
  
She couldn't remember the last time she cried, and even then, she was sure it wasn't ever over a boy, but no matter how she yelled at herself to get it together, the tears just wouldn't obey.  
  
_"Filthy slug! Miss Bitters called on ME! Understand? Filthy, squirmy Dib! Squirmy!"_  
  
The voice was relentless, continuing even as Zimm clamped her hands over her ears tightly in an effort to stop it.  
  
_"I can't BELIEVE the things that...HUMAN has done to me! ME!"_  
  
It was such an odd voice, and there could be no denying the frustration in it. Whose voice was it, and who were they talking about? Certainly not the Dib in her class, but then again, how many kids were named Dib? Where was this voice coming from, and what did it want her to do?  
  
_"He makes me so MAD! The horrible puny-brained meat-child. With his little glasses, and his...HEAD!"_  
  
Tears were streaming now down the teen's face as she struggled to compose herself. It wasn't so much the horrible screaming voice that bothered her, but instead it was the emotions that the voice made her feel. Hatred and admiration, frustration and anticipation, all of it whirled around her heart as the angry voice ripped her soul to pieces. Sure she was angry, but that was all part of their game. She would get angry, and plan something horrible, and he would rush off to stop her, repeating the whole process over again.  
  
But what game was that, and who did she play it with? Was she going crazy, and if she was, then why her? Why now? What was going on? The Dib she had just met didn't even have glasses! Was this someone's idea of a joke?  
  
_"'My name is Dib, with my pointy hair.' POINTY HAIR! 'I eat food and have stuff!'"_  
  
The door suddenly opened to admit two snotty looking girls, who headed straight for the mirror to admire themselves.  
  
Zimm had never been more grateful for a distraction in all her life. The more she focused on the world around her, the more that frightening, screaming voice was drowned out.  
  
"And then Todd said he'd never seen that movie! As if he'd never taken his ex last Saturday."  
  
"Get out! No _way_!"  
  
Zimm lifted her head from between her knees and reached for a paper towel from the dispenser above her to dry her runny, makeup smeared eyes. The two girls fortunately seemed to be too involved in themselves and their own lives to even notice the sniveling green haired girl sitting on the floor, something Zimm was extremely grateful for. She was already crying on her first day at this miserable skool, over a big headed boy no less. The last thing she needed was for some popular airhead to make her life even more miserable.  
  
Just as the two girls were about to leave and Zimm was about to make her escape from the bathroom, the door flew open to reveal the last thing a girl expected to see in a woman's washroom.  
  
"Dib?"  
  
The name dragged itself out of Zimm's throat almost involuntarily. What the hell was he doing here? It was bad enough that he was in her class, but now he was following her to the bathroom?  
  
She would have stood then and screamed at him to leave her alone if the sudden shrieking wails of the exiting girls hadn't beaten her to it.  
  
"I know what you are, Zimm!" Dib announced, raising his voice over the shrieking girls. "I don't know how I'll prove it, but one day, the world will see you for the...the...supernatural thingy that you are!"  
  
Zimm was about to reply, but she suddenly realized the futility of it. The girls, now recovered from their shock of the invading boy in their private washroom were taking turns pelting him with their heavy purses, and assaulting him with pepper spray.  
  
"What are you doing, you pervert!"  
  
"Sicko!"  
  
Any snappy remark Zimm would come up with would be wasted if the boy were unconscious, and unable to hear it. She would just wait.  
  
She didn't have to wait very long. Dib soon fell to the ground, weak and disoriented from the spray, and a bruise beginning to form on his gigantic head. Growling menacingly, the girls finally exited the bathroom, not without first digging their high heels into Dib's back as they left. Zimm grinned evilly, a plan suddenly coming to her.  
  
It wasn't something she should do, or even something that she would normally do, but that little voice in the back of her mind was screaming at the top of it's lungs that it sure would be fun to give it a try.

 


	3. Chapter 3

When Dib finally regained his senses, he still wasn't entirely sure of where he was. He was on his back, he knew that from the magnificent view he had of the water damaged ceiling.   
He tried to move his arms, but found them to be tightly secured against something cold and metallic, along with his legs. Where was he?  
  
Straining his ears, he could faintly hear the sound of typing and low whispers in the background.  
  
"Where...where am I?' he murmured, only to have a hand collide with his face as a result.  
  
"Shut your noise tube," a feminine voice hissed, sounding genuinely annoyed. He heard the footsteps of some one wearing boots coming closer to him, and felt a slender hand run down his bound arm.  
  
"Zimm? Is that you? What are you doing?"  
  
Dib moved his head awkwardly to try to get a better look at his captor. Sure enough, Zimm was there beside him, leaning confidently against a bookshelf, looking very pleased with herself.  
  
"You are surprised to see me, no?" she purred delightfully, stretching like a contented feline against the shelf.  
  
"Uh, no," Dib answered. "And what kind of idiot kidnaps someone in a library?"  
  
"Silence!" Zimm moved away from the bookshelf and slunk towards the table she had strapped Dib onto gleefully. "It looks like your little plan backfired on you, didn't it Dib? You just weren't content to leave me alone, were you?"  
  
"I never leave the paranormal alone!" Dib spat, struggling against the ropes Zimm had used to bind him. Where had she gotten rope anyway? The Tech room? Did she even know where that was yet? "I don't know what your plan is, Zimm, but you won't get away with it."  
  
"Oh? And why is that? You're not planning on stopping me, are you?"  
  
Zimm laughed a cackling laugh, that sent shivers down Dib's spine. What an odd laugh...odd and somewhat familiar.  
  
"I know you're not human, Zimm," Dib persisted, interrupting Zimm's laughter. "You may look human, and sound human, but you can't fool a trained paranormal investigator."  
  
Zimm cocked her head to the side, revealing perhaps too much to the restrained boy. She was interested in what he was saying. Not defensive, not angry, but genuinely interested.  
  
"Oh?" she replied, trying to hide her true feelings from this strange boy. "And in your professional opinion, what am I?"  
  
For a split second, her façade dropped, letting Dib see the confused soul she was inside. Did she even know herself what she really was? Dib was really beginning to wonder.  
  
Dib opened his mouth to reply, then quickly shut it.  
  
"I...I don't know," he admitted, averting his eyes from Zimm's. "But I'll find out one day!"  
  
Zimm almost seemed to be disappointed with his answer, as if she had been eagerly waiting for his diagnostic of her. It was almost like all she needed was a simple confirmation from him, or from anyone really, that would confirm something, some suspicion within her. But that was impossible. How could something so obviously not human be so confused as to what they really were inside?  
  
"Pathetic human," Zimm sighed at last, realizing that she would not get an answer from Dib on that day. "And for a moment there I thought you might have been different from the others. I guess I was wrong." Mindlessly, she grabbed a book from a nearby shelf and began flipping through it.  
  
"Why are you so convinced that I'm not human, anyway?" she demanded. "It's not like I've ever done anything to you. I just met you for God's sake, and already you're jumping down my throat. What's wrong with you anyway?"  
  
"I...I...It's just a feeling I have," Dib admitted, blushing a little as Zimm combed stray hairs out of her face. "I always go with my feelings, it's what real investigators have to do. The paranormal can't be proven with facts."  
  
"Feelings?" Zimm froze. Her eyes snapped shut abruptly, and she grimaced as if she were in real physical pain.  
  
There was a light, a blinding light before her, and a boy with amber eyes and scythe shaped hair, and her...feelings....  
  
"No!" she cried, snapping her eyes open quickly and glowering at Dib. "Feelings are worth nothing. NOTHING! An invader doesn't love!"  
  
"An Invader?" Dib repeated, his eyes beginning to widen. "What did you just say?"  
  
Zimm looked ill all of a sudden, folding her arms defiantly, trying to keep them from cradling her now burning brain, and attempting to remain in control of her trap.  
  
"I didn't say anything," she sneered. "You're even crazier than I thought. What a shame."  
  
Dib struggled against the ropes that bound him, but found that they were pretty secure. Whatever Zimm may be, she had a pretty in depth knowledge of knots.  
  
"I just heard you! You said you were an Invader! But demons don't invade things, that would just be stupid." His eyes grew even wider as a new idea began to dawn on him.  
  
"You're...you're...."  
  
"Shut up!" Zimm screeched, attracting the unwanted attention of a nearby librarian.  
  
The librarian moved away from her desk and started towards the two teens, clearly tired of having to remind children of the rules of the library. Zimm's eyes became eerie doom filled little slits and she growled angrily, upset at this unpredicted change in her plans.  
  
"This isn't over, stupid big headed Dib," she seethed, leaning over Dib menacingly. "Don't think that you can ever win against me." She leaned in closer to him, her lips hovering dangerously close to Dib's. "I am...completely...totally...human."  
  
Dib's eyes closed in anticipation of her tempting kiss, both fearing and craving the physical contact with the oddly inhuman girl. If his suspicions about her supernaturalness were correct, then kissing her would be wrong. Very wrong. Somewhere within him though, he didn't care. He had only met her that morning, yet not meeting her lips with his own almost seemed to be a blasphemy to the very real and frightening connection he already felt with her.  
  
"Young man? Are you all right?"  
  
Dib's eyes flew open to see instead of Zimm, a stern looking librarian hovering near him, looking very upset.  
  
"Zimm?"  
  
Dib tried to peer around the woman blocking his way, but from what he could see, Zimm was already long gone, leaving him stranded and tied to a table. That girl got more interesting with each passing minute.  
  
The librarian seemed to be too busy seething over the mess Zimm had left him in to notice Dib's emotional distress, though it was all Dib could think about. The emotions that girl stirred within him, they weren't natural.  
  
He went to lift his hand to gesture to the librarian to free him from his restraints, but he stopped as his hand brushed against something. He craned his neck to see what it was, seeing that it was the book that Zimm had been peering at before she had decided to run. He flipped it over carefully, trying to see the title written on the spine of the book. When he saw what it was, he gasped, causing the irritated library worker to grab him, sending Astronomy for the Lost and Clueless clattering to the floor.

 

  
  
The sky was overcast as Zimm began her walk home from skool, which put the already irritated girl into an even worse mood. Knowing her luck it would probably rain. She hated rain. There was no rational explanation for her hatred of the wet stuff, though that had never stopped her from hating something before.  
  
It had been a hard day. First days were usually hard, whether they were at work, or skool or a new social activity, yet this one had just seemed to drag on and on. It was all because of that infuriating boy, Dib.  
  
It had only taken him ten minutes to send her crying out of first period, where he insisted on following her into the girls’ bathroom, screaming about, of all things, her not being human. Well, even though her plan for revenge had backfired, she felt contented that she had at least extracted enough pain on him to make up for whatever it was that he did to her.  
  
The whispering in her mind had finally stopped, which was good, since if it had continued for a second longer, she might have murdered that big headed stalker. What she wouldn’t give to destroy him, to watch as he begged her for mercy, for forgiveness, for his life.  
  
Still...as much as he annoyed her, she had almost kissed him.  
  
Sure he got under her skin, but there was something there in those eyes of his...something familiar. She hadn’t the slightest clue how anything about him could be familiar, as she had never really had any friends before, and barely any family, but those eyes held within them a mystery that she yearned to solve, or rather a mystery that yearned for her to solve it.  
  
There was some connection she shared with the irritating boy, as much as she hated to admit it. That voice she had heard, the one in her head ranting about some Dib with pointy hair, only appeared when she was near him. She had never before in her life heard such things, especially in her own head, until today when they had locked eyes.  
  
She had only known Dib for less than a day, and all ready he was driving her insane, in so many more ways than one.  
  
The wind whistled around her, blowing her hair wildly around her face, and she vowed never to put her hair in ponytails again, as two huge chunks of hair whirled around in the wind, smacking her wildly in the face as they did so. This was her first time walking home from her new skool, and though she lived relatively close to her new hi-skool, she had never had a reason to visit this area before and therefore knew next to nothing about the strange area. She knew that nearby was an elementary skool, and that a few blocks away from that was the former house of Professor Membrane.  
  
She had to wonder what such a house would look like. A house said many things about a person, so what would the house of the greatest scientist known to mankind reflect about his life? Would there be pictures of his kids lining the walls, or would a man of Membrane’s fame even have time for such trivial things as children? On the news, it had been announced that his daughter, and lone surviving child, Gaz was putting the house up for sale and buyers from around the world were bidding like mad to own a piece of Membrane history. There was no way Zimm would probably ever see the amount of money to even make a bid on the house in her entire lifetime, yet there was an odd desire within her to see this house.  
  
She wasn’t the biggest Professor Membrane fan, but it wasn’t as if she hated him either. His numerous accomplishments did help her in her day to day life, and she had to admit that she preferred his original recipe for super toast over the new one his successor had created, but that certainly didn’t translate into a burning desire to see Membrane’s base.  
  
Wait, base?  
  
She shook her head, trying to clear her jumbled thoughts. It was Membrane’s lab, never his base. Where would she even come up with such a word?  
  
Her day had been weird enough as it was, and as urgent the desire to visit Membrane’s old house was, she decided she would pass on the possibility of more weirdness. People would be fighting over that house for a while, so she had all the time in the world to visit it. She would come back on a day when she happened to be sane.  
  
A corner presented itself as she walked along the street, and keeping with her decision to retain her sanity for the rest of the day, she chose the direction farthest away from the Professor’s house. She turned right and kept walking, her head in a daze as she walked.  
  
As hard as it was to admit it, her mind was still on that stupid boy from her English class. If she hadn’t been as emotionally distraught as she was at the time, the sight of an excited, and clearly insane boy bursting into the girls’ bathroom would have been funny. As annoying as he was, his wild accusations were actually kind of cute. Sure, Zimm would be the first person to agree that she didn’t belong on Earth, or in her body, but to accuse her of being a demon of some sort? The idea made her want to snicker, despite her severe annoyance with Dib.  
  
The sidewalk was reaching another fork, and Zimm was far too distracted to notice. One foot placed itself in front of the other, hips swiveled and unknowingly to her, Zimm had unconsciously turned into a small crescent. A honk of a car’s horn jarred the distant girl from her distracting Dib related thoughts, and she looked around her, startled to see that she had no idea where she was.  
  
She was standing in a small little crescent, with maybe a few houses, each with a car parked in the driveway, every house the very picture of normal human living. The neighborhood itself was fairly simple, almost to the point of becoming cliché...well all except one house.  
  
An odd wind blew, twirling Zimm’s hair around her once more, carrying with it an equally odd feeling. What was it that Dib had said earlier, that paranormal cases had to be solved with feelings instead of facts? She had listened to Dib’s ravings previously that morning because of how out of sync she had always felt on this Earth, but now...now there was another nagging...feeling.  
  
Zimm walked towards it quite normally, though to her, everything seemed to be running in slow motion. It was exactly like a scene from a badly written horror movie. At any moment, Zimm half expected someone to jump out from somewhere and scream that this was all a lie; that the feelings that were devouring her were all false.  
  
Before her lay the ruins of a once green house. Charred flamingos and disproportionate gnomes littered the lawn, and pieces of what looked like a satellite dish had embedded themselves sporadically across the property. To anyone else, it would have been a mess, or an eyesore, but to Zimm, using her newly found feelings as a compass, it was...home.  
  
The words felt odd even as she thought them. She didn’t belong among human society; she had never fit in and never ever would, but here, on this rotating ball of dirt, in the charred remains of a house came the powerful sensation of belonging.  
  
She belonged here. This was something that could not be ignored. It was far too powerful to be brushed away, even by the most skeptical of people. She had to get closer.  
  
Surrounding the ruins was a white picket fence, which Zimm ran her hands along absentmindedly as she walked. Stepping over broken gnomes, she hesitatively approached the doorway. It was bizarre how familiar this all seemed, even though she was technically trespassing. The foundations of the house still stood, and actually looked pretty stable, considering the state of the lawn. The front door looked as if it had been stolen from a cheap restaurant, as it was basically a piece of wood with a men’s bathroom sign posted on it. Attempts had been made to board up the door, probably by concerned neighbors. This was easily remedied with a swift kick from Zimm. The door now lay open, leading the way to answers.  
  
All Zimm had to do was enter.

 


	4. Chapter 4

The door beckoned to Zimm, whispering such seductive promises to her all ready tired and weary mind. Behind the door, it whispered, she'd realize what was wrong with her, why she never fit in. Behind the door would be memories, and answers of who she was, and that ever elusive family of hers that had seemed to have left her for dead. All the answers to her questions, all the secrets of unlocking her dreams all seemed to be tied to this odd, nearly destroyed house. So she entered; it almost seemed impossible not to.   
The interior of the house was as decimated as the lawn appeared to be, with scorched walls, partially incinerated furniture, and a sad looking, but mostly intact picture of a green monkey.  
  
This house was sad. Its aura was sad. She had no great beliefs in the paranormal, but even she couldn't deny the repressed memories that she somehow sensed within the walls. Something awful had happened here, the evidence was everywhere around her.  
  
But what did this strange ruin of a house, have to do with her, and why did she feel as if she belonged? She had never seen this house before in her entire lifetime and yet....  
  
"I'll bet they thought they had their whole life ahead of them."  
  
"Eh?" Zimm whirled around to find her newest obsession standing behind her, looking at the contents of the abandoned house sadly. How had he gotten in here? Was he following her? "Dib? What are you doing here?"  
  
Dib shrugged in reply and perched the arm on the nearby remains of a couch, looking contemplatively at Zimm, as if he expected her to be happy to see him after skool hours.  
  
"The two kids that died here," he continued, as Zimm gave him a seething death glare. "I'll bet they never even saw the end coming. How can you be ready to face death when you're only 12?"  
  
"What madness do you speak of now, Dib?" Zim snarled, feeling defensive about her lack of knowledge. How could this mysterious place of belonging have been the place of death for some kids? Wouldn't she have heard about it on the news?  
  
The boy rolled his eyes impatiently, looking around at the gloomy scenery that surrounded him.  
  
"Don't you know anything, Zimm?" he teased. "What did your old skool teach you, anyway?"  
  
Zimm's hands curled into fists at her sides, while her face flushed several shades of angry red. Was he questioning her intelligence? She could outsmart him any day! That stupid-  
  
"Out with it!" she shouted impatiently. "How dare you mock me? You don't even know me!"  
  
"Well you seem to be the only one who doesn't know the history of this house," Dib shot, causing Zimm's face to darken further with an intimidating rage. "This is the house where Membrane's kid died. Him and some foreign kid had some kind of accident here, though no one really knows what happened. I saw a documentary about it on television once, and they never did find the cause of the explosion that destroyed most of the house. It's been speculated that there was a lower level in the house where the actual explosion took place, since an explosion of that size would have destroyed the house's foundations if it had been set off on the main level."  
  
"A missing basement?" Zimm scoffed at the idea. "How do you lose an entire level of a house? That's just stupid."  
  
"They never did find any bodies," Dib offered. "If the accident occurred underground, that would explain why no one's found any remains. If we find the basement, we find the bodies."  
  
"If there are any bodies to begin with," Zimm corrected. "You said there was an explosion? Well usually explosions don't leave much behind to be found."  
  
Dib looked as if he was about to reply, but Zimm cut him off angrily, suddenly realizing that she shouldn't even be talking to him. What was he doing following her around anyway?  
  
"What are you doing here?" she demanded, placing her hands on her hips angrily, which Dib found irresistible. She was sure was cute when she was mad. He'd have to irritate her more often.  
  
"I'm conducting legitimate paranormal studies," he answered proudly, folding his arms against his chest.  
  
Zimm looked less than thrilled at this proclamation.  
  
"Oh, and I suppose I'm the paranormal being you're studying, huh?"  
  
Dib nodded, knowing how much it would irritate Zimm.  
  
"Yup," he declared. "I know you're not human, and I'm determined to prove it. It's only a matter of time before I find out your secret."  
  
Zimm looked skeptical about his intentions. Sure it wasn't every day that she was followed around while being accused of being paranormal, but Dib was a guy, and she knew plain as day what a guy following her around usually implied.  
  
"You're perverted if you think I'm going to fall for that excuse," she shot. "I've heard lots of pick up lines, but that's the weirdest one by far."  
  
"Huh? But I'm not-"  
  
"Not what? Stalking me? Following me even to the bathroom? Well you can forget it. Pathetic losers just aren't my type."  
  
Dib looked slightly offended by this comment, yet was definitely amused.  
  
"And what makes you think you're my type?" he replied confidently. "How could a guy fall for you anyway? There isn't room in a relationship for both him and your ego."  
  
A smirk crossed Zimm's lips, but it vanished as soon as she saw Dib grin in reply. She dismissed him with an arrogant wave of her wand and turned away from him, once again focused on the mystery of the odd green house.  
  
"Whatever," she sighed. "Lie to yourself if it makes you feel any better. Your constant presence tires me, and I have far more important things to think about."  
  
From behind her, Dib sighed and reclined further on the couch he sat on.  
  
"Yeah, it kind of seems pointless fighting here, doesn't it?" He stared at the scorched ceiling pensively. "This place is like a reminder of just how short life can be, and how meaningless fighting is in the long run." A strange look of regret flashed across his face. "It makes you wonder just how much time you have left yourself. I mean, if something that horrific could happen to children, it could happen to anybody."  
  
A heavy sigh filled with frustration came from Zimm, and she rolled her eyes, wishing Dib would just shut up before he came up with more pointless philosophical musings.  
  
"If you say so. Right now, I'm kind of wishing that something horrific would happen to you."  
  
"I wonder what those two kids were doing here anyway?" Dib said, obviously too deep in thought to think of a reply to shoot back at Zimm. "Well, the foreign kid lived here, but why was Membrane's son here? Maybe they were just friends hanging out after skool together."  
  
"Or maybe the foreign kid lured him over to his house to kill him because he couldn't stand to be followed any more," Zimm suggested, her voice sounding sweet while her eyes blazed angrily. "You know, contrary to your belief, some people do enjoy their privacy."  
  
"You'd have to be really stupid to get killed yourself in the process of murdering someone," Dib remarked, earning himself another glare from Zimm. "Besides, Membrane's Dib was going to be a paranormal investigator, just like I am. A little thing like privacy wouldn't get in his way. We paranormal-"  
  
"You're named after Membrane's son?" Zimm could hardly keep from laughing. A snicker escaped her lips, causing Dib to frown slightly. "The insane one?"  
  
"Yeah, so? Membrane was a friend of the family!"  
  
"That's pathetic!" she roared. "An inferior human such as yourself, filled with paranormal delusions, named after Membrane's insane son!" She smirked evilly. "Looks like that name's cursed."  
  
"Shut up, Zimm. A common interest is all we share. I'm nothing like him at all."  
  
"I'm sure." Zimm snickered again, this time a little louder than before. "Poor, insane little Dib. You're just as crazy as the previous Dib, and look where his craziness got him."  
  
Dib suddenly became quiet, as he processed her comment. There was something a little too eerie about the way she said that, something too personal. A life of paranormal investigation was dangerous, sure, but what if people were wrong about Dib's death? What if the original Dib really was murdered? What kind of 12-year-old foreign boy would be driven to murder?  
  
"That won't happen to me," Dib answered solemnly, looking deeply at Zimm for reasons beyond his understanding. "I...I...Dib wasn't murdered. He couldn't have been...."  
  
Falling into light, looking up at ruby eyes as the pain took him. Fading away, fighting for breath and feeling arms wrap themselves around him tightly. Fading...Fading...and then a whisper....  
  
"No," Dib declared suddenly, blinking away unexplained tears. What was with him lately? "It had to be an accident. It just had to be."  
  
"What the hell are you babbling about?' Zimm demanded, now glaring furiously at the irritating boy. "It doesn't matter how he died, the stupid kid is dead! Just because your family knew him is no excuse to act like an idiot." She rolled her eyes in exasperation. "Sniveling worm-monkey."  
  
She began to walk further in the house pretending to look around, though mostly it was just an excuse to be further away from Dib. Dib raised a quizzical eyebrow at the retreating girl, but followed after her, still convinced that she secretly wanted him around, despite her threats.  
  
"Worm-monkey?" he repeated, amazed at her odd choice of insults. "Okay....So where are you headed? Off to search for the missing lower level?"  
  
Whirling around furiously, Zimm shook an angry fist at the boy menacingly.  
  
"What is it to you?" she demanded. "I'm going somewhere, and I don't expect you to be there to bother me! Go stalk someone else for a change!"  
  
Instead of looking crushed like Zimm had wanted, Dib looked excited. This boy would be the death of her.  
  
"You are going after the missing level! The Mysterious Mysteries crew was all over this place. Membrane himself couldn't find an entrance! The only way to really find out is to tunnel under or demolish the house, but there's no way you'll get permission to do anything since Membrane had this place declared-"  
  
"SILENCE!" Zimm shouted, absolutely seething. "No one tells me what to do! No one! Are you as blinded as the rest of the fools on this planet? Don't you realize who I am?"  
  
"Uh, yeah, of course I do. You're Zimm, and-" Dib began, a little weirded out by the maniacal tone in her voice. Zimm soon interrupted him with her unique cackling laughter.  
  
"I am ZIMM!"  
  
She looked to her left where a small table was pushed against the wall of the living room. Instinctively, she gave it a swift kick, destroying it and sending shards of wood flying across the room. She began to cackle again, immensely pleased with herself.  
  
"Zimm?" Dib lowered his arms from his face, convinced that he was now safe from the threat of flying wood shards. "Are you okay? You're acting a little weird...."  
  
"INFERIOR boy, you have no idea of who you're dealing with," Zimm sneered. "Your beloved paranormal people have been studying this place for years, have they?" She gestured to a metallic elevator tube that the table had been concealing.  
  
"Well, I just found your missing level in under twenty minutes."

 

  
  
"Well?"  
  
Zimm looked expectantly at Dib, but he was too busy gaping at the metallic hole before him.  
  
"What if that's just an air vent, or a laundry chute or-"  
  
"Even if it is a laundry chute, logically it has to lead some where, doesn't it?" Zimm sighed. "Forget it. I didn't even ask for you to follow me anyway. It's my discovery, and I'll claim whatever's on the other side."  
  
"But if it's connected right to the furnace-"  
  
Dib's warning went unheeded as Zimm gave her stalker one final smug glance and disappeared down the tube beyond what Dib could see.  
  
"See ya, Dib," she laughed gleefully, her voice echoing down the tube. "Pitiful dirt child."  
  
"Dirt child?" Dib's face screwed up into an odd mixture of confusion and amusement. "Man, Zimm, you should really buy a thesaurus. Your insults are just plain weird!"  
  
He gave one final, worried glance over his shoulder, and then vaulted down the tube Zimm had just disappeared into, hoping against hope that he'd come out alive on the other side.  
  
The tube was dark and constricting at first, and if Dib had been claustrophobic, he'd have been a world of trouble. The design of it seemed oddly inhuman, almost as if it had been designed for someone the size of a child. Someone of his impressive height could get through it easily enough, though a bit awkwardly. At one point, there had probably been a mechanism that would have glided the floor of the tube up and down like an elevator, but now, in its ruined state, the ride down was similar to a broken roller coaster. Whatever explosion had killed those two kids, had also ruined this impressive technology, either that or this house was beginning to go a bit wacky after almost seventeen years of neglect.  
  
At last, the horrific ride in the tube ended, spewing Dib out of it at the last moment. He cried out, expecting to collide with the cold floor, but instead landed on something quite soft. A soft something with angry red eyes. Dib had been thrown stomach first on top of Zimm, who while looking quite unhappy about the situation, also was looking rather flustered.  
  
This awkward positioning was not to last long however, as Zimm quickly shoved Dib off of her and began to look around.  
  
"Don't touch me!" she growled, desperately trying to downplay the emotions that threatened her when he touched her. Dib saw through her pitiful guise, but decided not to pursue a conversation on that topic, since he was still pretty confused about his own emotions, especially those concerning Zimm.  
  
"Where are we?" he breathed, taking in his surroundings. "This place is amazing!"  
  
"This place is nearly destroyed," Zimm corrected irritably. "I think we found our point of origin for an explosion."  
  
If this wasn't the place the bomb or whatever had gone off, Zimm shuddered to think of how much worse that place would look compared to this. Once this level had been amazing, full of technology, computer monitors and random, important looking wires. Now...now it was nothing.  
  
Glass shards from broken monitors littered the floor, surrounded by melted keypads and damaged consoles. Loose wires hung limply from the walls, having been severed from their places years ago. Dust coated every dead part of the level after years of neglect, making Zimm's sensitive nose twitch slightly. Ash dominated this domain, covering the floor and walls like a heavy blanket. It appeared that the blast had been so hot, so intense that anything within a certain radius of it had almost immediately been incinerated. Metallic walls protected the two teens, though some parts of them had been eaten away by the explosion, exposing dark dirt to the area.  
  
"How far underground are we?" Zimm wondered out loud, to which Dib could only shrug.  
  
"I have no idea," he answered. "Pretty far, I guess. Think there are any more levels like this?"  
  
"Probably, though this is most likely the worst one. If any of your stories can be believed, then this is the very same room of the detonation."  
  
Dib looked solemn once more at this reminder, and he bowed his head respectfully.  
  
"If that's true, then this isn't just a basement; this is a tomb."  
  
An eerie silence fell between the two teens as they each reflected on the severity of that statement.  
  
"This is the last thing those two ever saw," Dib commented, gazing around at the scene before him. "Do you think they were afraid?"  
  
 _"Zim!" A whirlwind blew his scythe of hair into his eyes, preventing him from seeing clearly. "Zim? Where are you? Don't tell me you've just left me here! Not now!"  
  
A blinding flash of light burned into his retinas and sent him flying against a wall. He felt tears stream down his face as he tried to wipe the dirt from his eyes with his trench coat. It was the end this time. He knew without a shadow of doubt that despite all of his close calls in the past, there would be no escaping now. He would die here, defending the Earth against the alien he secretly had grown to love, but he would be damned if he died here alone.   
  
"Zim?" _  
  
"Zimm!"  
  
"Eh? What now, Dib?"  
  
Dib rolled his eyes and leaned against a ruined console, staring at the contemplative girl before him.  
  
"I asked you a question," he replied wearily. "Do you think they were afraid at the end? This place is so dark and dreary. It must have been terrifying for them."  
  
Zimm peered at Dib curiously, trying to shrug off the image of a dying amber-eyed boy in her head. This had been different than the whispers she heard in her mind. These emotions weren't coming from within her; they were coming from the house itself. Sorrow and loss clung to these walls just as strongly as the ash did.  
  
"You have a problem, you know that?" she stated coldly, though she couldn't bring herself to look harshly at him. Something about the way he stood there, with those eyes...it was too similar to her disturbing visions. "First you follow me around everywhere, regardless of proper social limitations, accusing me of who knows what and now you're obsessed with living out the horrid death of some dead friend of the family. Your morbidness scares me."  
  
"I was just...whatever, you're not human, you wouldn't understand." Dib waited for her usual angry response confirming her humanness, but to his surprise, it never came.  
  
"Maybe you're right," she whispered, holding a shard of glass she had found on the floor that was lined with incoherent foreign scribbles. "As insane and morbid as you are, you just may be right."  
  
"What? Then you're actually admitting that-"  
  
Zimm walked away from him, her head too far away to concentrate on the boy's excited ramblings. What was that memory about, and whose was it?  
  
A boy who was the sole defender of Earth against a single alien. A boy, who fought against, irritated and agonized some alien, and ended up falling in some twisted form of love with him, ending up dying in some foreign kid's basement completely alone. It just didn't make sense.  
  
"Dib...Stink," she snarled, "did anyone know that foreign kid's name?"  
  
"Yeah, of course," Dib replied cockily. "Once again, a simple fact that is common knowledge among normal humans. So come on, what are you really? I know you're not a vampire, but-"  
  
"The name?"  
  
Dib recognized the threat in Zimm's voice immediately and stopped ranting...for the moment.  
  
"Zim. The kid's name was Zim. Apparently he had some kind of a skin condition or something."  
  
"Zim."  
  
Zimm rolled the name around in her mind carefully. So the foreign child was named Zim, and the crazy, original Dib was looking for him just before he died. But if Dib died looking for an alien, what was Zim doing there? It was all too much to comprehend with too many variables and loose ends to solve. She'd leave it for that stupid Dib to figure out. It wasn't as if he had anything better to do with his time anyway.  
  
She wandered aimlessly, trying to brush off the effects the memory had on her. This place was familiar; she could almost see the layout for it in her mind. A chamber there, a view screen to the right...She longed to investigate these thoughts further, but first she had to ditch Dib. Who knew what he'd do if she actually stumbled across something? He'd have TV crews everywhere, prohibiting her from ever finding the truth that she sought.  
  
Dib shuddered from behind her as Zimm walked further into the ash. Zimm turned to face her stalker with thinly veiled contempt.  
  
"What is it now?" she sneered. "Did you see a ghost somewhere? Maybe Bigfeet is around somewhere too."  
  
"It's not that," Dib replied, dismissing her rudeness with a wave of his hand. "Someone just walked on my grave, that's all."  
  
Zimm gave him a terrifying glare in response. Her infinite and mighty patience was wearing thin, hearing about all this paranormal crap. Did Dib even hear himself as he talked? Did he know how annoying he was to listen to?  
  
"I beg your pardon?" Zimm's voice held no room for discussion; an invisible warning of bodily doom hanging on to each word she spoke. Dib gulped nervously, though inside of him, he felt a familiar rush racing through him. He didn't know what it was about her, but arguing with Zimm was just so...fulfilling.  
  
"You know the old saying, that when you suddenly get a shiver, it means someone just walked on your grave. I just felt that. Creepy, huh?"  
  
For a moment, Zimm looked as if she were actually thinking about his statement, though just Dib began to think that he'd finally made some headway with her, she turned her back on him again, brushing him and his theories away coldly.  
  
"I don't have time for your stupid superstitions. That's all they are. Only a child would believe those tales."  
  
"Or a paranormal investigator," Dib murmured, mostly to himself. Zimm had obviously stopped listening to him and as he was rapidly learning, there was just no reaching her when her attention was elsewhere. She was hopeless.  
  
Ahead of him, Zimm had stopped to peer at something buried in the ground among the ash. Excited flushed through Dib. Had she found something interesting, like a skull, or some other remains?  
  
"What are you looking at?" he demanded, sneaking up behind her and peering over her shoulder.  
  
"A...dog...thingy," she answered absent-mindedly. Digging under the ash, she pulled out a green, friendly looking dog. It wasn't a real dog, a fact that was made glaringly obvious by the fact that it was both green and had a zipper running along its stomach.  
  
"It's a toy," Dib breathed, reaching to touch it. Zimm pulled it just out of his reach before he could make contact with it, feeling somehow that any contact on Dib's part would be wrong.  
  
"It's mine," she declared defensively, cradling it in her arms. "I saw it first, so it's mine."  
  
"But...."  
  
"What would a teenage guy want with a child's toy anyway?" Zimm shot, to which Dib couldn't think of a valid response.  
  
"Fine," he sulked. "Whatever. It doesn't matter anyway. I'm sure there are tons of cool stuff to be found here that put your stupid toy to shame. How did it survive the explosion anyway? Everything around here is in ruins, except for that toy thing."  
  
"Maybe it fell down here after everything had happened," Zimm answered, her irritation with Dib fading as she became more and more transfixed by the little dog.  
  
"Pfft. Whatever," Dib sighed, slipping away from the girl to see what other stuff he could claim for his own.  
  
Zimm ignored him, tracing the little dog's face fondly with her finger.  
  
" _GIR_...."

 


	5. Chapter 5

“What did you say?”  
  
Dib hovered around Zimm, staring intently at her wistful face.  
  
“Go away, Dib,” Zimm growled and shoved him violently away from her sight. She stopped gazing at the dog toy and instead resumed her plans to rid Dib from her presence.  
  
“You called that toy something, almost like you knew it,” Dib accused, picking himself off the floor and dusting himself off.  
  
“I was reading its tag,” Zimm sighed, holding the little tag on the dog’s zipper up for Dib to examine. “It says his name is GIR. Happy now?”  
  
“Nope, not until I find out your secret,” Dib announced, sending Zimm’s right eye twitching.  
  
She pulled back the gloves she wore to reveal her hidden watch. 4:45. Somehow she had to ditch Dib and make sure he wouldn’t return here without her knowing. As exciting as this unexpected trip was, she had a brand new telescope to play with waiting for her at home, and a Dib related headache was fast approaching.  
  
But how could she ditch him? More importantly, she had gotten here purely by luck, and had no idea of how to get home from this strange place. As much as she hated to admit it, she could use Dib. He had followed her here, hadn’t he? He had to know the way back.  
  
“Dib!” she called out, catching the boy’s attention immediately.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
Zimm took a deep breath and screamed with all of her might, startling the poor boy hovering near her.  
  
“I think I’ve broken my spine!” she screeched, and Dib’s eyes widened in concern.  
  
“Really? I mean...you have a spine? Er- uh, do you need a doctor?”  
  
Always having been a bit on the dramatic side, Zimm fell gracefully to the floor, clutching her spine painfully.  
  
“I...I just need to go home,” she whimpered, melting all of Dib’s reservations in an instant. Who was he to question a woman in distress?  
  
“O-Okay,” he stammered nervously. “What can I do? Should I call an ambulance? Did you fall somewhere in here?”  
  
“No,” Zimm seethed, not believing the lengths she had to go to just to get home. “I need you to take me home. It’s almost five and I don’t think I can make it myself. Do you think you could help me home?”  
  
Dib looked torn between staying where he was and rummaging through the ashes of this place, and helping Zimm. He looked at those odd eyes of hers and his decision was made. He couldn’t just leave her to walk home alone in her condition, and besides, he had to find out where she lived sometime if he was going to learn her secret. This was an actual, legitimate excuse to examine her living quarters!  
  
“Sure, Zimm. I could walk you home,” he agreed, extending a hand to help her up.  
  
Zimm looked at him deviously, a much more sinister idea occurring to her then.  
  
“Actually....”  
  
  
\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
“Are you sure I couldn’t have just called you a taxi?”  
  
Dib grunted as he strained to remain upright. It had already been four blocks of torture, with no end in sight.  
  
Zimm however seemed to be enjoying his suffering. She lay in his trembling arms, looking extremely regal as Dib carried the “injured” Zimm back to her home to recover. She held the dog that she had found in the building in her arms smugly, knowing that the thing must have weighed close to ten pounds on its own, which added even more weight for the already suffering Dib to carry. If he was forced to walk much further, he’d be the one with the injured spine.  
  
“Silence!” Zimm commanded forcefully. “We’re almost there. I think you just have to turn right from here.”  
  
Dib groaned, and shifted his grip on the girl once more. Why had he agreed to do this?  
  
Fortunately, Zimm had been right, and a small red house with a colossal telescope in the backyard appeared in no time at all.  
  
“Is this it?” Dib whimpered, praying to any god that would listen to end his pain.  
  
Zimm nodded, happy to see her own property once more. For a moment there, she wasn’t sure if she’d ever find her way back from that ruin of house she was exploring. She made a mental note to buy some kind of GPS mappy system to avoid such a problem again.  
  
“Well, your assistance has been most kind,” Zimm stated, struggling to remove herself from Dib’s grasp, but ultimately failing. “I think I can take it from here.”  
  
“Oh no,” Dib growled, realizing at last that he’d been had. “I’ve carried you all the way here because of your broken spine, and it wouldn’t be polite of me to just leave you here now. What if you fall on your way in?” He reached for the doorknob on the front door and found that it was unlocked. “You leave your front door unlocked when you go to skool?”  
  
Zimm shrugged, still struggling in his arms.  
  
“Why not?” she replied. “All the stalkers apparently go to skool with me!”  
  
Dib entered her front hallway, noting just how small her house really was. The walls were a dull and boring white, with no pictures, or decorations adorning them. Around the corner was a bathroom, as equally decorated and a simple looking laundry room.  
  
“Where are your parents?” Dib wondered as Zimm finally managed to free herself from his grasp, jumping gracefully onto the floor.  
  
“I don’t have any,” she replied honestly, stretching a little. “They died or something when I was younger. They left me this house and a bank account with enough money to pay the bills each month.”  
  
“You have no parents?”  
  
“Well, I have vague memories of starting kindergarten and going to be registered some woman,” Zimm admitted. “That’s about it. They just left one day, and never came back.”  
  
“And you’ve never looked for them?” Dib questioned skeptically. “Not once?”  
  
“I’ve done internet searches using the names on the bank account, but nothing really came up,” she answered. “Why should I care about two strangers that left me to fend on my own? That’s crazy. Good riddance to them.”  
  
“I...I guess,” Dib stammered, looking strangely sympathetic towards Zimm. “Look, if you ever need to-”  
  
“I don’t need your pity,” Zimm snarled, turning away from him suddenly. “I’ve survived all kinds of birthdays, and holidays on my own without help from anyone. I am superior. I need help from no one.”  
  
“Is there only one floor? Where do you sleep?”  
  
“There’s a basement downstairs, where I reside most of the time,” Zimm answered wearily. “I do not require much more. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to make dinner.”  
  
“Can I stay?” Dib asked, looking a little shy about asking. “I mean, I could keep you company. My dad works late on weekdays, and most of the time I don’t even think he notices whether I’m still there or not. I’m sure he won’t mind if I stay for dinner...or notice.”  
  
“No.”  
  
Her answer was sudden and immediate, and as soon as the words left her mouth, she was already beginning to shove Dib out her doorway. He began to protest, but the door was already closed and locked by the time he could get the words out. He stood for a while, just staring at her door, while Zimm leaned on the other side of it, waiting to hear him leave.  
  
An hour passed and still Dib had not moved from her doorstep. Another hour passed, and soon both teens could feel their eyelids begin get heavy from lack of moving. Dib leaned against the door, his head beginning to nod, while Zimm curled up against the other side of door, using her newly found GIR dog as a makeshift pillow.

 

  
  
 _The containment field shook menacingly, threatening to erupt at any moment._  
  
"Stupid, big headed Dib!" the small green figure snarled. "Look what you've done!"  
  
"What I've done? This was your crazy idea! Besides if your stupid robot dog thing had only done its job instead of chasing after that stupid pig we wouldn't be in this mess!" He looked nervously at the throbbing piece of machinery next to him. "If it keeps shaking like that-"   
  
"You'll be destroyed!" The green alien burst out into a fit of laughter, his antennae twitching with excitement. "Finally I'll be rid of you and the Earth will be mine for the taking!"   
  
The boy with the crazy hair sighed, his right eyes twitching slightly.   
  
"You'll be destroyed too, you idiot! Your whole base, your whole mission, everything! Now shut it off!"  
  
"Eh?" Zim moved to press a switch on the throbbing machine, but was thrown back by a powerful burst of energy.   
  
"Zim?"  
  
"I can't shut it off! I can't even get near it! Prove yourself useful for once and dismantle that thing."  
  
"Me? You're the SUPERIOR being remember? Why would you even think of doing something this stupid?"   
  
"Stupid? That's the finest weaponry in the Irken empire, temperamental yes, but efficient at doing the job I require. It's been nice knowing you, Dib-human."   
  
Dib looked horribly confused at this statement...maybe even afraid.   
  
"You're going to destroy your base, and yourself in the process, just to get rid of me?" he whispered. "You wouldn't."   
  
Zim shrugged, his spider legs deploying from his PAK. He gave Dib a final twisted grin before disappearing into the shadows of his base.   
  
"Pitiful human!"  
  
"Zim! Come back here! You did this!"   
  
"Dib!"  
  
Dib's eyes snapped open as a blinding flash of pain ran through his body. Squinting, he looked up at the rising sun, to see Zimm towering over him, looking extremely annoyed.  
  
"Zim?" he murmured, still stuggling to break free of his dream, not anywhere near being awake.  
  
"Have you been here all night?" the angry looking girl demanded, her red eyes ravaging his still sleeping form. "I should really install some kind of security system."  
  
"Good morning to you too," he murmured, stretching out on her doorstep with a huge yawn. "What time is it?"  
  
"Time for you to remove yourself from my property," the irritated girl hissed, running a hand through her green hair irritably. She had taken it out of yesterday's ponytails, and had just left it to spill down her shoulders messily. "I'm leaving to go to skool, and I expect you to be off the premises and attending skool as well."  
  
"But I haven't eaten breakfast yet!" Dib protested, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "It can't be time for skool all ready."  
  
"It is indeed time for skool, filthy dirt child, whether you want to believe it or not. Now get off my lawn and go to skool where I can ignore you and my existence will be blissfully happy once more."  
  
Dib yawned again, massaging his aching shoulders. Sleeping on a front step was murder on your back.  
  
"Can't you at least make some toast or something?" he grumbled. "I'm starving!"  
  
"Then you should have gone to your own house and ate there," Zimm stated coldly, completely unsympathetic to his needs. She herself had woken up late, and had to skip breakfast, so if she could deal with it, why couldn't he? "Why should I feed someone who is so bent on driving me insane that they sleep on my lawn all night? I should have you arrested."  
  
Dib blinked, his face showing no signs of hearing a word Zimm said.  
  
"Uh huh...so that means no toast then?"  
  
  
\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
Dib burst into his homeroom class five minutes late, panting heavily. He had refused to leave Zimm's lawn without breakfast, so she had tied his leg to a cord and literally dragged him to skool, which was pretty good for a girl who had supposedly broken her spine the day before. She was pretty strong for her size, which had surprised him.   
What didn't surprise him however, was how coldly she walked away from him after tying the cord that bound his foot to a stop sign in front of the skool, leaving him completely vulnerable to oncoming traffic. It had taken him five minutes to undo the knot she had tied, and luckily traffic was slow that particular morning, a fact that likely spared his life.  
  
Since his hi-skool was non-semestered, his homeroom rotated every two days, meaning that he didn't have English with Zimm where he could confront the amusing girl about endangering his life. Today, he had sociology for homeroom, a class he hoped Zimm was in. He had no idea what classes she was in due to the fact that she had kidnapped him in the skool library the day before, but he hoped she was in at least one more of his classes. That girl needed to be watched.  
  
His sociology teacher looked up from his reading the notes on his desk to greet Dib with a stern glare. Sitting at the back of the classroom, hiding in the back corner, was Zimm, who was doodling idly in her notebook. She looked up from her drawings to give him a disappointed look, which Dib interpreted as a "Why aren't you hospitalized yet?" look.  
  
It was a familiar look, oddly like the one in the dream he had had last night about dead Dib and his crazy green friend Zim. It was a look of insanity, of a desire to rid oneself of something so bad, you never once considered the consequences. Sure Zimm wanted him away from her –that much was obvious- but what if a car had actually hit him? He doubted that deep within her, she'd be able to deal with the guilt of his death or dismemberment.  
  
"Dib, thanks for deciding to join us today," his teacher drawled, standing behind his desk. "Better late than never, I suppose."  
  
"Sorry," Dib replied, taking his seat and sticking his tongue out victoriously at Zimm. She ignored him and scribbled in her notebook even faster. "I was kind of tied up."  
  
His teacher sighed. He was young, nearing his early thirties in fact, yet he was already tired of teaching. Each day having to deal with teenagers and their laziness, and their excuses...and Dib. He did not get paid enough to tolerate Dib.  
  
"Today your assignment is due regarding the social structure of modern society," he droned. Dib looked confident, knowing that he would probably be the only person to hand in his assignment out of the whole class. "Raise your hand if you completed the project."  
  
Only Dib's hand shot up in the air.  
  
"Raise your hand if you at least started the project."  
  
Two hands were raised halfway in the air, along with Dib's overconfident one. Zimm rolled her eyes. Dib was so...annoying. If she could just get the teacher to look away for a second, maybe she'd have an opportunity to at least throw a textbook at his head or something.  
  
"Put your hand down Dib," the teacher growled, making Zimm snicker from across the room.  
  
"But I did the assignment," Dib protested, waving his hand around. "I was the only one!"  
  
The teacher sighed, massaging his throbbing temples. That boy....  
  
"When your project is about researching modern society," he scowled, "it's implied that you should research modern human society. Harassing your neighbours and labelling them as yetis does not count as a completed project."  
  
"But...." Dib looked absolutely crushed, which made Zimm happy. Served him right. At least she knew that he devoted time stalking people other than her. Stupid big headed Dib.  
  
"Since none of you seem to care enough about this course to do the work," the teacher continued, "you all deserve to fail. But since it would reflect badly on my teaching ability if all of you failed, you're getting a new assignment. You all will do this one, or...extreme measures will have to be taken."  
  
The teens around Zimm gulped nervously, as if they were afraid of these mysterious extreme measures. Even Dib seemed to be a little unnerved at the thought of them, despite the fact that he would actually do his project.  
  
"You will have to write a report on a local lunatic and then present your findings to the class in a multimedia presentation. You have two weeks to complete this task."  
  
"A lunatic?" a voice from the back of the room piped up. "Why do we have to do a report on someone crazy?"  
  
The teacher shook his head sadly.  
  
"It will prepare you for the horrible truth of today's world," he replied, handing out the rubric for the new assignment. "It will also give you insight on how I view you horrible creatures. If you get stuck, the number for the crazy house for boys/girls is on the back of your rubric."  
  
Dib raised his hand once more, sending a shudder of irritation through the teacher. Dib was the reason he was considering an early retirement...twenty years early.  
  
"Yes, Dib? What is it now?"  
  
"Can we do anyone we want, as long as they live in this area?" he demanded. His teacher glowered threateningly at him.  
  
"Yes, so long as they're HUMAN," he answered. "No yetis, no ghosts, just humans."  
  
Dib grinned evilly, an amazing idea striking him. He leaned back to look at Zimm, who just glared at him in response.  
  
The bell signaling the end of class rang, and Dib struggled to get through the stampede of teens to Zimm's desk. Everyone was so eager to be out of first period though that Dib was almost trampled in the process, not that anyone would have noticed. By the time he reached Zimm's desk, the mysterious girl had disappeared, off to her next class.

 


	6. Just

Dib entered the lunchroom a few hours later, his eyes on careful lookout for the familiar green haired girl. She hadn't been in any of his other classes, and since he didn't have English that day, there was no opportunity to monitor her during classes. Lunchtime was his only chance and now, even as unique as she was in appearance, Zimm was lost to him in the sea of hungry teenagers swarming the cafeteria lines.   
There!  
  
Finally he spotted her, sitting at a table by herself, picking at the questionable food in front of her. He smirked. So whatever paranormal species she was, she hated the cafeteria food as much as any other human. She poked at some peas on her plate suspiciously, expecting them to attack at any second.  
  
Dib watched her, captivated by her every movement, no matter how mundane it seemed to others. She was amazing, perfect in every sense of the word to the boy. Still, there was that ego of hers to consider, plus the fact that she was a paranormal life form.  
  
He sighed, realizing that he'd never be completely at peace with his emotions concerning Zimm. Still....  
  
Reaching over a kid waiting in line for his lunch, Dib grabbed a muffin from a nearby tray, calculated for a bit, then whipped the muffin towards his target.  
  
"What the hell?"  
  
Zimm screeched loudly enough for the entire city to hear her, as the muffin collided with her head, though few teens seemed to notice. Zimm looked around her angrily, searching for the identity of her attacker. Red eyes made contact with amber, the mystery attacker revealed.  
  
"Dib," Zimm growled, picking pieces of muffin from her hair disdainfully.  
  
Dib made his way towards Zimm's table and sat beside the ticked off girl.  
  
"That was for endangering my life this morning," he clarified, revealing his motivation for whipping muffins around.  
  
Zimm just glowered, flicking pieces of muffin across the table distractedly.  
  
"Oh, please," she sighed. "Like you'd actually have gotten hurt. No, that was just simple revenge for overstaying your welcome on my lawn last night. I warned you."  
  
"Warned me that you'd leave me in on going traffic? You're insane, you know? That's why I've chosen to research you for my project."  
  
"Excuse me? What project?"  
  
Zimm eyes incinerated the boy, as her mind whirled frantically to understand just what he was talking about? What project? She had been to three classes that morning and had barely paid attention in any of them. She hadn't even been at the skool for a week yet and already she was slacking off.  
  
"This is just some sad excuse to follow me around some more, isn't it?"  
  
"You know, the project we have in sociology?' Dib reminded her, sighing at the lost look on her face. "The replacement assignment for the one only I did? The one about a local lunatic? Man, Zimm, you really have a problem with listening!"  
  
Zimm fumed where she sat, ignoring every word to leave Dib's mouth.  
  
"ISN'T IT?"  
  
Dib gave her an odd look, but ended up just sighing again. She was hopeless, completely, and utterly hopeless.  
  
"So I guess you don't know who you're going to research then, since you didn't even remember about the project!" Dib complained. "That is so typical of you Zimm. Are all the members of whatever species you are this dense, or are you just special?"  
  
"I'll have you know that I have a person already chosen for my project," Zimm barked, waving a threatening fist at Dib. Dib just flicked a piece of muffin towards her in response. "I have an AMAZING and INCREDIBLE choice already selected, who was both local and insane! No one you can choose can surpass my selection, NO ONE!"  
  
With a roll of his eyes, Dib rested his head on one of his arms, the frustration of dealing with someone so infuriating really starting to get to him.  
  
"But I'm studying you for my project," he corrected. "How can my selection of you be inferior when compared to...you?" Zimm stared at him blankly. "Oh never mind. So who is this awesome and incredible person anyway? Do you even have one?"  
  
"Why, I'm researching the craziest person ever to live in this area," Zimm replied smoothly. "I've selected the Dib as my project topic."  
  
"Dib?"  
  
"Yeah, Dib Whatever his last name is," answered Zimm with a distracted wave of her hand. "Membrane's son. The crazy one."  
  
"That's not fair!" Dib exclaimed, banging the cafeteria table angrily. "You only chose him because we were at his death site yesterday! You're just taking the easy way out instead of doing actual research!"  
  
"And you're just looking for an excuse to stalk me," Zimm retorted, blushing slightly, though Dib would never know the real reason.  
  
How could he? There was no way for him to know about the dreams she'd been having, about all those disturbing flashbacks, and especially the alarming feeling inside of her whenever she thought about the deceased Dib. This project was a gift in disguise; giving her a chance to investigate Dib's life further without being hounded about her reasons. There was something about that boy that sparked something within her, like some kind of insatiable curiosity that nagged at her when her guard was down. The currently alive Dib, as annoying as he was, did serve a purpose. The visions she had begun to see had only started with Dib's presence, and as frightening as they were, they brought her a step closer to the truth she had spent her whole life looking for. Though she hated to admit it, if she wanted to learn anything about Dib and Zim's mysterious deaths, and through that knowledge, know herself better, she needed Dib's namesake around her. He was a pest, but at least he was a cute one. She could be worse off.  
  
"Not that it's any of your business," she began, catching Dib's interest immediately, "but I'm going over to Membrane's old house to talk to Dib's sister Gaz for my project."  
  
"So?"  
  
"So, if you really are researching me for your project, then I just thought you'd like to know," Zimm finished, watching his reaction carefully  
  
. Under normal circumstances she wouldn't be able to get any work done with Dib hovering around her, but in this case, the intense reaction Dib invoked in her would come in handy. If she were to find out the truth about the visions she'd been having and what they actually had to do with her own life, she'd need Dib there beside her.  
  
Dib, for his part, looked thrilled. He beamed proudly and inched closer to Zimm, who in turn moved further away.  
  
"It sounds like you're actually asking me to come with you!" he exclaimed gleefully. "Could the world be coming to an end already? Zimm actually wants me near her?"  
  
His head tilted playfully to look at the slightly amused girl. Deciding that this was perhaps a bit too close for her own comfort, Zimm gathered her things together in a hurry and stood.  
  
"Whatever," she replied, running her fingers through her hair irritably. "You're the one who should be studied. You're crazy."  
  
She spun around on her heel and exited the cafeteria, pushing over a kid balancing a full lunch tray as she did so.  
  
Dib could only shake his head.  
  
  
\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
Thunder boomed in the background as the final bell rang, freeing the teens from their imprisonment. Zimm was one of the first ones out, anxious to begin her research as soon as possible. The answer to all of her questions was within her grasp at long last, all she had to do was reach out and take what she wanted. But it just had to rain.   
Typical. Just when things were starting to go her way, weather had to go and ruin it all. Since she had been preoccupied tormenting Dib that morning, she had forgotten an umbrella or one of her many rain ponchos.  
  
Oh, how she hated rain. Damn the chilling wetness that seemed to fall from the sky without any warning at all. That rain...it was sneakier than Dib. Not even the weatherman could predict its movements, or just when it would appear to torment Zimm. It wasn't as if the rain hurt her human body which was composed of water, it was just....Who knew? Maybe she had gotten stuck in a thunderstorm as a child.  
  
"You look cold."  
  
Zimm whirled around to see Dib standing behind her, rubbing his arms to warm up.  
  
"Dib?"  
  
"The thing I hate most about the rain is the cold wind," he explained. "Not even a sweater can warm you from the dampness in the air." He looked at the short red dress she wore in amusement. "You must be freezing."  
  
The girl shrugged and turned away from Dib.  
  
"Not really. I see you decided to come and follow me." She got a grin from the boy in reply.  
  
"Trust me," he answered, "if you really are going to see Gaz, you'll need back up."  
  
"Whatever. Let's just go and get this over with already."  
  
She left the shelter of the roofed front stairway of the skool, bravely heading out into the wall of rain that awaited her. Dib followed behind her, though she could only hear his footsteps behind her. The rain was too blinding the see anything around her for Dib to be visible. How she hated the way the rain soaked her hair and ran down her face. It was disgusting, and yet there was no escape from it. She was at its mercy. She turned behind her to see Dib's lips moving, though his words where lost to the wind.  
  
"What?"  
  
Dib ran to get closer to Zimm, his arms pulling his shirt up to cover his head from the rain. It was times like these Dib almost thought of wearing those cool looking trench coats his father bought him every Christmas. Sure his father was just trying to fit him into someone else's persona, but right now, Dib would put up with the crowd of Membrane fans mistaking him for the dead Dib if he could just be warm.  
  
He felt bad for Zimm since she had to be freezing. She looked absolutely miserable each time the thunder boomed behind her, which Dib found undeniably cute. It seemed that his nemesis had one weakness after all: she was afraid of thunderstorms.  
  
"I live just down the street!" he cried loudly to be heard over the pounding rain. "Follow me!"  
  
He took off and to her surprise, Zimm actually followed behind him. Jumping over squishy lawns and ugly gnomes, Dib jumped a side fence and opened a side door on one of the houses. Zimm leap over the fence with ease and followed her stalker into the warmth of the house.  
  
"This is your house?" she breathed, wringing her hair out on his carpet rudely.  
  
Dib nodded proudly.  
  
"Yep. My dad is almost never home, but at least his job can pay for a really cool house." He walked out of the carpeted hallway, shivering slightly. "I'll make us something to drink. What do you want in your hot chocolate?"  
  
"A sweater," she replied, taking in her surroundings.  
  
This place was bland, just her house, but it was different. Not only was it bigger and obviously more expensive, it felt as if people actually lived here. Dib said his father was never home, but the atmosphere was so...familyish.  
  
"Do you have any siblings?" she called, as Dib mixed the chocolate powder in the kitchen.  
  
"No," he replied. "It's just me and my dad. I swear I must have been like born in a tube or something, since my mom's never been around. My dad never even talks about her. Hell, he barely talks about me for what's it's worth." He stepped out into the living room where he had left Zimm to find that she had disappeared.  
"Zimm?"  
  
He found her ten minutes later two floors higher, in his room, rooting through his closet.  
  
"Hey! Zimm! What are you doing?"  
  
Zimm emerged from his closet sporting one of the ultra durable trench coats hidden at the back of his closet.  
  
"Warm," she purred delightfully, taking her drink from Dib boldly. "I can't believe you never wear these, these are amazing!"  
  
"Yeah well, it's personal," Dib replied, still a bit surprised to see a girl in his room. If only his father knew.... "Anyway, as soon as we're done here, we should leave. It's starting to let up outside, and I've got a whole closet full of scientific looking umbrellas just in case."  
  
Zimm was just about to turn to leave when she saw Dib reach for something out of the corner of her eye. She whirled around to find Dib and a video camera pointed right at her.  
  
"What are you doing?" she demanded, her eye twitching at the boldness of this boy. "Do I really need to say anything about you being a stalker anymore?"  
  
"I'm just doing my project," he insisted. "Sure I might get marks deducted for not researching a human, like the teacher wanted, but I'm sure that my footage will speak for itself."  
  
"I'm a human!" Zimm shouted suddenly, throwing her hot chocolate at Dib angrily. "Human!"  
  
Hot chocolate, while it tastes great on those rainy days, can also be a powerful weapon when thrown at a person. It can ruin computers, leave horrible stains on your carpet and scald your sensitive eyes when thrown around. This Dib found out the hard way.  
  
"AAAHH! My eyes!"  
  
Checking to make sure the trench coat really did fit her properly, Zimm grabbed the screaming teen by the back of his shirt and started to drag him and his precious video camera towards the main floor.  
  
"Don't make me regret inviting you."  
  
  
\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
It was short walk from Dib's house to the house of the great Professor Membrane. Dib's father had wanted to live as close to Membrane as possible since they had spent all day working together, and in order for the wireless monitors they had set up to work efficiently, the physical distance between the two had to be minimal. The short distance between the houses also meant that it would be easier for Dib to attend the skool Membrane's son had attended, and less walking time for Gaz when she was forced to baby-sit Dib when he was younger.   
Zimm's influence over Dib had to be powerful for him to go near Gaz willingly. He had grown up wondering if Gaz really was human, since she seemed to care nothing about the human race, particularly the little boy named after her dead brother. She had baby sat him until he was six, when his father had decreed that Dib was able to fend for himself. He had just seen Gaz two thanksgivings ago when Membrane had invited him and his father over to eat.  
  
Gaz was in her late twenties now but still every bit the nightmare he remembered her as. In the absence of her brother, Membrane had started pestering her about REAL SCIENCE! To everyone's surprise, she was actually good at it too, and had the advantage of not being insane like her brother had been. Still, it was her love of video games that won her over in the end, and while she could live comfortably on royalties from her father's products for her whole life, she chose to work when her mood inspired her at a division of Membrane Enterprises that she had created herself: the video game division.  
  
The house was the same as Dib remembered it, with the weird laser fence around the grass and the garage that always smelled like burning plastic. Dib didn't have the courage to summon a creature like Gaz, so it was Zimm who rang the doorbell while Dib taped her from the safety of the bushes.  
  
The door opened to reveal a woman with shoulder length purple hair, and Dib gulped. She was attractive enough, since she actually looked human with her black dress and gothic skull pendant, but Dib knew better. While she may not be paranormal like Zimm, Gaz was the single most frightening thing on this planet.  
  
"What do you want?" she hissed, her hands holding a new upgrade to the gameslave line. "I'm not buying anything today so leave me alone."  
  
"Wait!" Zimm cried, sticking her foot obnoxiously in the doorway. "I want to talk to you about your brother."  
  
For a split second, her eyes opened a bit, revealing an amber shade the same startling colour as the boy in Zimm's visions. He grip on the gameslave wavered as repressed memories made their unwelcome way into her mind.  
  
 _"Excuse me, miss?"  
  
Violet hair swirled to reveal cold amber eyes, similar to her brother's in shape and appearance...yet so much more scary.   
  
The officer gulped, terrified of the girl before him despite her small size.   
  
"Are-are you of any relation to a...Dib?"   
  
Amber eyes opened fully in an odd excitement.   
  
"Ooh, did Dib get mauled by Bigfoot this time?"   
  
"Uh, no. He-"   
  
The girl still looked excited at the thought of harm befalling her brother, which, frankly frightened the officer.   
  
"Was it gory?" she asked darkly, a weird smile beginning to form. "Does he have to use one of those claw arms now?"   
  
The frightened officer began to back away, now seriously terrified of this strange girl.   
  
"Look, the kid hasn't been mauled by anything. I'm just looking for his next of kin."   
  
"Next of kin?" she repeated, confusion wiping all excitement from her face. "Why?"   
  
"There's been an accident." _  
  
Gaz looked at the unlikely pair before her with her patented Gaz glare, all traces of emotion wiped from her face.  
  
"Are you one of those...reporters?" she demanded darkly, her voice sending shivers down Dib's spine.  
  
Zimm looked at her undaunted and unafraid, a very brave thing considering who she was facing.  
  
"No," Zimm assured the scary woman glaring at her. "I'm just a normal human hi-skool student doing a project on your brother. Our assignment is to research a local lunatic and do a report on them."  
  
Dib beamed proudly from the bushes and pointed at Zimm.  
  
"I'm researching her," he supplied, aiming his camcorder at Zimm once more. Zimm made a threatening fist at the boy, and Dib backed off a little, fearing for his camera.  
  
Gaz almost seemed to relax at the introduction...almost.  
  
"Well, Dib was insane." She smirked as if remembering the various times she had to endure his ravings. "I guess I could help you a bit. If it doesn't take too long."  
  
She opened the door further and allowed Zimm inside, Dib following intently with his camera.  
  
"I still have my brother's room intact after all these years," Gaz stated, gesturing to a stairway. "Dad wanted to convert it into another lab, but since a vacation day never opened up for him to work on it, it's just stayed the way it was."  
  
"Fascinating," Zimm breathed, starting up the stairs. When she noticed that only Dib was following her, she stopped suddenly, causing Dib to crash his precious camera into her shoulder. "Aren't you coming with us? You're just going to let strangers into your home?"  
  
Gaz shrugged and picked up a small gaming system from a nearby table.  
  
"It's not my home," she replied coldly. "It used to be, but it's not anymore. And I never go in that room, not since...." She trailed off uncertainly. "Dib annoyed me in life; I won't let him annoy me in death too."  
  
She turned her back on the pair, now intent on her game.  
  
"You have fifteen minutes. A second longer and I'm calling the cops." Gaz soon disappeared into another room, consumed by her never-ending desire to destroy vampire piggies.  
  
Zimm looked at Dib and shrugged.  
  
"Scary, isn't she?"  
  
Dib nodded in complete agreement. Man, that woman scared him. He saw her still once every few years when she showed up at his dad's lab to claim royalties from some of her dad's products, or that each awkward time his father had invited Membrane and his daughter over for supper. Thank god she had stopped babysitting him long ago. Each time he saw her, there was always some unexplainable awkwardness between them, which Dib blamed on his being named after her brother. Her brother's death had a greater impact on her than she let on, but Dib knew better than to try to comfort her. There was something familiar about her though, like an odd sense of incurable déjà vu. He didn't dare tell this to her, as he valued his life the pain free way that it currently was.  
  
"Which room is it?" Zimm wondered, looking at her watch carefully. They only had fifteen short minutes here. There was no way she was going face the purple haired woman if they ran over that time period. She was terrifying.  
  
"It's the second one on the right," Dib answered quickly, also eager to be done here and away from Gaz. "I found it one time while I was looking for the bathroom during Thanksgiving a few years back. We'd better hurry. Trust me, even in my brief encounters with Gaz, I've learned to take her seriously. We're lucky to even have this chance."  
  
"True."

 

  
  
The room was indeed where Dib had said it was; the door in a constant state of closed, having been marked off with caution tape. Zimm had to assume the tape was Gaz's doing, maybe even as a sort of grieving ritual.  
  
This room had obviously not been disturbed in seventeen years, meaning that Zimm could look forward to just as much dust as she had seen in the odd house where she had found her GIR dog. Great. Just great.  
  
Zimm pried open the door after carefully disposing of the caution tape and stepped inside. She wasn't sure what she was expecting, but it sure wasn't this.  
  
The room was indeed covered with dust, though everything else seemed perfectly normal. It was almost as if Dib had only left his room for a moment and would return to it at any minute. The bed wasn't made, revealing the outer space themed sheets the boy had slept on. A computer sat on a desk beside the bed which was laughably outdated compared to modern equipment.  
  
Though she didn't want to show any weakness with Dib around, Zimm couldn't help feel a little saddened by her surroundings. This room had so obviously belonged to a kid, a kid with his whole life ahead of him, with dreams and ambitions. A kid that would never return.  
  
 _You did this._  
  
Zimm shook her head, trying to rid herself of the memories of the boy who haunted her dreams. It wasn't her fault the Dib with the sad eyes was dead; how could it be? She was simply being paranoid.  
  
"So what are we looking for?" Dib asked, scanning the room with his camera.  
  
Zimm shrugged, looking around the space themed room awkwardly.  
  
"I don't know," she answered, a chill running down her spine suddenly. "Anything, I guess. Whatever will help explain how crazy his life was."  
  
"That shouldn't be too hard," Dib remarked sarcastically. "Just look at this place! It's like he had aliens on the brain."  
  
"Or just one in particular," Zimm murmured quietly, not entirely sure where the comment had come from. "Just grab whatever you think is appropriate and we'll take it with us. I doubt his sister will care, so long as we're out of her house within the time limit."  
  
Dib began rooting through drawers, recording everything the way it was while Zim scanned his bookshelf. This kid had had the paranormal constantly on his mind. His bookshelf was crammed full of books on ghosts, séances, and lake monsters, with a few never used books about science wedged behind them.  
  
Zimm reached for a book disproving vampire lemurs to investigate further, but when she pulled at the book, a small brown book fell out instead, dropping to the floor. Zimm picked it up curiously, carefully brushing the dust off the cover.  
  
It was a log or a journal of some sort! She felt excitement rise within her at her discovery. She had found his journal! What better source of information could she find about his life than the information he provided himself?  
  
Flipping through the pages, she saw that the logbook was almost full with only space for a few more entries. Had he lived he would have had to buy a new book...had he lived.  
  
Zimm turned to the last entry to find it had been written on the day of the accident that had killed Dib. This was it! Finally, real proof of what happened on the day of the accident, and possible answers to all the questions that plagued her. Glancing quickly over to make sure Dib was distracted enough for her to read without interruption, she turned to the last page and began to read.  
  
 _Dear log,  
  
Zim is up to something today, I just know it. Well, technically he's always up to something, but today it feels...different. I just have a bad feeling about today, but I can't really explain it. Maybe I really am crazy. Still, I have to go investigate despite any premonitions I might have. This is Zim after all. He's my calling in life; I just know it. I have to stop his plans, he expects me to, the world expects me to.   
  
Sometimes I wonder though, what life would be like if only Zim didn't have that damned mission. The way he looks at me sometimes...it's like he's as tired as I am of this game...like he wants to just see me as a person, not as the enemy I have to be. Damn his people! For that matter, damn my own people. What's stopping me from just giving up, surrendering to Zim and life be the way we both want it?   
  
My life is not my own to do with what I want! The Earth and the blissfully ignorant people who live on it own me, just as much as Zim is owned by his Tallest. Two beings who might have been friends, or maybe even more than that under any other circumstances, forced to fight each other as bitter enemies for the sake of forces they'll never understand. It's stupid.  
  
It sounds weird to think this, but it's like we're star-crossed. Yeah I know how stupid this may seem, but I think we could definitely relate to Romeo and Juliet, only not in the sappy romance way that they were. Like Zim could ever feel that way for me as much as I wish for it; never in this lifetime anyway. Call me crazy (you wouldn't be the first) but I have this feeling inside of me. Not a good one either. Just as Romeo and Juliet were pawns for their families like Zim and I are to our people, I fear Zim and I may face a similar ending.   
  
How long can Zim and I keep fighting? How much of my life will I have to give to protect my planet, to deny myself the future I want in peace with Zim? Just like the two famous lovers, I know I'll die with Zim; it's my destiny. I have to; he's my soul mate after all, the one soul equal to mine in every way that matters. I'm only twelve, nearing thirteen this summer and all ready I've found my soul mate. I know I have to die one day, but as long as Zim's there with me, I know I won't be afraid. Yes, he's insane, and most of the time he's a real jerk, but when I look at him, it's like looking at myself had I been born an Irken.   
  
If the Earth could do me just one favour in return for all that I've done for it, I'd ask that it release me. Release me and give me my life back. Give me Zim.   
  
I have to go now, it's almost four. With any luck, this awful feeling of mine will turn out to just be indigestion or something and I'll be back in time to watch Mysterious Mysteries. For the first time in my life I hope I'm wrong. Either way I have to go; my life is not my own. All I can do is hope that one day it will be. _  
  
"What are you looking at?"  
  
Dib peered over Zimm's shoulder curiously and Zimm clutched the journal to her chest tightly.  
  
"Nothing!" she snapped quickly. "It's nothing. It's my project, go look at something else!"  
  
Dib shrugged, making a mental note to steal the book away from Zim when the chance arose and wandered off to root through Dib's closet.  
  
When he had left, Zimm opened the book again, tracing the words with her finger thoughtfully. His life hadn't belonged to him...she knew how that felt. She wasn't sure why she sympathized with that feeling, but she just...did.  
  
 _"Welcome to life small Irken child. Report for duty."_  
  
Duty. She had wanted a family, someone to love her like the humans loved their young, and all she had gotten was duty and a cold unfeeling robot arm. She was insane, dysfunctional, broken in her society. A soldier for an empire she had no say in. Cast off her home world into banishment, from banishment to her glorious mission, from her mission to...Dib. She was not free to love, she had to destroy, to win at all costs. To kill her soul mate for an empire that would never love her the way the boy had.  
  
He was relentless for his people, as devoted as she was to hers. They were destined for destruction; it was inevitable. All they had were the days of peace, and silent, hopeful looks at the other, each of them waiting for the day they would be free. Free to live. Free to love.  
  
It's okay Dib, she thought silently, a tear quietly rolling down her cheek. I understand. My life didn't belong to me either. The only thing that belonged to me was you.  
  
Dib sighed and dragged himself out of the dead Dib's closet. There was nothing interesting there, nothing to help explain away the visions he had had since meeting Zimm. It was disquieting to be here in the room of a dead child, one he was named after. The one he saw die in his dreams at night. If only there was some clue! Something!  
  
As if on command, a child sized trench coat fell from its hanger and onto his head as he went to close the closet door. He picked it off his head curiously, a small piece of paper falling out of one of the inner pockets as he did so. Picking up the piece of paper, a weird sensation ran through him.  
  
It was a photograph, obviously an often viewed one judging from the worn corners and it's place right next to Dib's heart in his jacket. It was a picture of the green skinned kid Dib dreamed about at night. Zim.  
  
Well, dead Dib was also in it, but that wasn't the important thing. The important thing was that they were together, in the same picture for as long as the picture survived.  
  
He...he remembered taking it. It seemed so long ago, yet at the same time like it was yesterday.  
  
 _He had been spying that day, just like any other day. He had gone through the window of the green house since the robot dog thing was in a regular habit of leaving it open. He had been upset that day, for so many reasons, the most recent of which being the fact that Gaz had locked him out of the house until he replaced the soda he had drank. His father was never home, and his sister may or may not have been the anti-Christ in disguise. They had all laughed at him at skool today...well every one but Zim. He had just watched from his desk quietly, drawing what Dib suspected to be blueprints for yet another stupid scheme.  
  
His life was already so hard to live and he hadn't even hit hi-skool yet. There was only one thing to cheer him up today and that was to bother Zim. He loved the look in Zim's eyes -his real eyes, not the contacts he wore to skool each day- when he realized Dib had managed to make it in his base yet again. It was a look that made Dib wonder if it really was GIR who left that window open each day, or if the lawn gnomes really did have such bad aim.   
  
Dangerous thoughts to think when they were about your sworn enemy.   
  
"Zim? Are you here?"   
  
He heard the clicking of the track that raised the underground elevators and saw his beloved alien rise from the garbage can in the familiar kitchen.   
  
"Dib-monkey," he greeted pleasantly, looking genuinely affectionate for the first time since Dib had known him. "I was hoping you'd drop by."   
  
"Why, so you could just throw me out again?" Dib replied, a little unnerved by Zim's warmness.   
  
Zim just smiled oddly, making Dib even more uncomfortable. This was exactly what he always wanted, to just talk to Zim like two friends, yet when it finally happened, he was forced to be suspicious.   
  
"Normally I would," Zim agreed. "But today is different. Oh so different."   
  
"Why? It's just one day out of many," Dib sighed. "And a particularly bad one so far."   
  
"In my AWESOME research, I've come across some thing I'd like you to explain," Zim began, catching Dib's interest, but not easing his nerves any.   
  
"And this thing is?" he asked wearily.   
  
Zim sat down on his couch, inviting Dib to join him. The boy did hesitantly, looking around him for any sign of a trap.   
  
"I was studying your great wars," Zim explained eagerly, hope almost seeming to shine through his exotic red eyes. "Although they are PATHETIC examples of wars when compared to the INCREDIBLE feats of the Invaders, there is a story I am most interested in."   
  
"A story? From one of the great wars? What are you talking about?"   
  
"Two opposing sides of humans at war with different governments," Zim clarified, growing impatient with excitement. "They kill and destroy each other every day for years because of what their countries dictate to them. And then one day, and for only one day, a holiday occurs that is shared by both countries. I believe it was that wretched X-mas you humans seem to love so much, but that's not important. During this common holiday, there was a stand still and the two sides stopping killing each other and enjoyed each other's company, realizing that despite their differing missions, they were still just filthy, revolting humans. The next day when the holiday had passed, they resumed their mission and killed the ones they celebrated with the day before."   
  
"What's your question?" Dib asked, his voice growing soft as he thought of the implications of that story.   
  
"Is it true?" Zim whispered, his voice barely audible. "Do humans really do that? Do they really show mercy to an enemy if only for one special day?"   
  
"Yes," Dib answered breathlessly, afraid that he would wake at any moment to find this moment was only a wishful dream. "But an occasion like that is hard to come by. X-mas is still along way away and I have to fight you even then. I'm sure you haven't forgotten last X-mas."   
  
To this Zim smiled happily and scooted closer to the boy on the couch.   
  
"But today IS different," he assured Dib. "Today marks one full Earth year since I've arrived here...since I met you. Today is the only holiday I can think of that we both share, and it is a meaningful one...at least it is to me."   
  
Zim held his breath, waiting for Dib's answer. Didn't the large headed boy see the potential he saw in this day?   
  
Dib beamed in reply, setting Zim's heart at ease.   
  
"It means a lot to me too," he replied, extending his hand to his nemesis. "We're just two life forms living on this planet today. No mission, no fate-of-the-world work, just people."   
  
Zim clasped Dib's extended hand with his own, pale skin meeting green and smiled.   
  
"Just people," he agreed.   
  
Things were finally as they should be...even if it was only for a day. It was the greatest, most enjoyable day of either of their lives, destined only to be continued in the one surviving picture they had taken. _  
  
"Zim," Dib breathed, haunted memories rising to the surface of his mind.  
  
From behind him, he heard Zimm exhale sadly, as if she too felt the uncontrollable sadness that churned within him.  
  
"Dib."  
  
Dib's heart pounded so hard he thought his chest would explode messily all over the room as he turned to face the girl behind him. Her red eyes met his amber ones and for an instant, time stood absolutely still between the two of them.  
  
What could Zimm say to the boy before her? What would make the pain in her heart go away? She wasn't sure why she saw these strange visions of two dead strangers, or why she felt so lost on this planet, but she finally understood something else. She had been alone in this world, with no family or friends, and had only been half of what she could be. Somewhere, someone was waiting for her to complete them, and somehow, some way, that person was beginning to look more and more like that stalker Dib.  
  
"Zimm? I...I have to do something really stupid," Dib stammered, reaching for the girl's hand awkwardly. "I've never really done this before, and I know you'll probably leave me in traffic again for trying, but...I have to do it anyway."  
  
Breathing stopped momentarily in both humans, as Dib's lips inched slowly towards Zimm's. Zimm made no move to stop him; she couldn't if she tried. She was frozen where she was, frozen in time, waiting for his kiss to set her free from her prison.  
  
Lips eagerly met each other, as two bodies pressed together perfectly, closing the distance of so many lost years. Thoughts and emotions swirled around the two as they became lost in each other. Red and amber, scythes and green skin all blended together, twisting around a mission. A vow to protect and expose, a promise to destroy. Forbidden love seventeen years later with two different bodies but similar hearts. Defiance to two systems of control as life was reclaimed, free to start over from the beginning. Freedom.  
  
"You have five minutes left!"  
  
Gaz's shriek of annoyance jolted the two back to reality, which was an extremely painful transition to make when one was as lost as they were.  
  
"What happened?" Dib whispered, staring at Zimm intently, noticing the tears in her eyes for the first time.  
  
"I...." Zimm trailed off uncertainly, gathering the journal and the picture Dib had dropped on the floor quickly. "I have to go."  
  
She turned away from Dib, hesitating at the doorway for what seemed like hours to Dib.  
  
"Zimm?"  
  
"This is too weird," she whispered. "I...I just wanted to know who I was, where I belonged. I never asked for this. This has gotten far too weird and complicated. Visions and dreams of two dead people haunt me each day. I can't sleep at night. All I get is more questions, never any answers. I want it...I want it to end."  
  
"Zimm?" Dib's voice sounded hoarse, his mind still swirling with borrowed emotions from a past that wasn't his. She couldn't mean what she was saying. She couldn't!  
  
"Maybe...maybe we have powers," he suggested, desperate to keep her from leaving. "Maybe you're psychic and you're conducting a spirit. Maybe I am too! Maybe we're just both insane, but I don't care! We have something Zimm, you can't deny it. Don't just walk away from what we could have. I know you felt the same thing I did, so don't bother denying it. We belong together; we're destined for each other! Don't just leave!"  
  
Red, sorrow filled eyes searched his soul as she let the picture she had picked up fall to the floor. It was all so confusing. Dib stood before her, but he wasn't just Dib. There was an aura around him in the place, an aura that filled her with fear. For whatever paranormal reason, he wasn't just annoying Dib; he had been instilled with a secret pain of two beings long forgotten. Two beings that still lingered in the air, the weight of their hidden pains and premature deaths suffocating Zimm, cutting off her own air, her own life.  
  
Couldn't Dib feel it too? Fate had brought them together, but for what reason? She wasn't either one of the dead boys and therefore wanted nothing to do with their conflicted past.  
  
Dib looked at her again with those damned amber eyes of his, making her want to burst into a fresh round of tears. Why....  
  
 _You did this. Come back and face me, Zim. This is your fault._  
  
"Good bye, Dib," she whispered, her voice full of regret. She turned away, fresh tears spilling down her face as the sound of thunder returned to the sky outside. "If only we were just...If I could just understand...."  
  
She ran down the stairs in a hurry be out of the way Dib's hurt glances, never turning back once. Dib picked up the picture Zimm had left behind carefully. This picture had been precious to the previous Dib, taken on the one day he had with the enemy he loved. The wo dead enemies had had just one day and it had lasted them the rest of their lives. Was this his one day with Zimm? Was that the only time he would wrap his arms around her, the only time he would ever feel complete?  
  
It couldn't be. He couldn't let it be! He had to go after her, had to tell her...tell her what? The look on her face haunted him, as if she was on the verge of something, something her mind just couldn't comprehend. The same feeling tugged at his mind, though he welcomed the mystery instead of fearing it like Zimm did. This was destiny at work, which meant they had to stick together but no matter how hard he tried to stop it, Zimm's haunted words were burned into his mind. If only we were just....  
  
"If we were just...what?"

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

Dib had run like an idiot out of the Membrane house, the haunted picture squeezed tightly in his hands.  
  
"Zimm! Come back! Zimm! I'm sorry!"  
  
But the girl had already vanished into the rain, leaving Dib's umbrella behind. He was too late; she was gone.  
  
Zimm didn't show up for skool the next day, or even the day after, which Dib had pretty much expected. However, it was when she didn't show up after a week and a half that Dib began to worry. Had she hurt herself, or gotten sick? Maybe she was trapped somewhere and needed rescue. There were so many possibilities, and all of them frightened Dib out of his mind. Had he scared her off by kissing her?  
  
That kiss.... His head still swam when he remembered kissing her. It was more than a physical feeling, much more. It was like...like...he had no idea of how to describe it. He had lost himself to Zimm, to forces working without their knowledge, to memories that weren't really his. It was terrifying, yet so fulfilling at the same time. He had really wanted to talk to her about what happened, to apologize for overstepping the bounds of their forced friendship but how could he do that if she didn't come to class?  
  
Sure, he knew where she lived, but was he really willing to risk being left in traffic again for trying? There was an instinct within him that urged him to go to her house and follow her, but he did his best to ignore it. Stalking her just seemed so tiring lately.  
  
Instead his thoughts focused on discovering her paranormal secret. She had to have one since no normal girl could do the things she did to him. No mystery, or aura clung to the other girls in his class; only to Zimm. Each day, in her absence, he dragged himself to each of his classes, reflecting on the mysteries he found in her eyes.  
  
A kid named Dib and a kid named Zim. Together they had died, but why? Because of some mistake on Zim's part? And if they loved each other, why did they still fight each other so passionately?  
  
Duty. The word rang through Dib's mind as he thought about the picture he now carried with him in his wallet. It was a picture of the desires the two kids had died with, a picture of a future in peace.  
  
But what duty were they following and why? They were only kids, weren't they? And on top of all that, what did their deaths have to do with him and Zimm? He was being dense, he realized this, but the pieces of the puzzles just weren't clicking together no matter how long he spent thinking about it. What could the connection be?  
  
He had already suggested to Zimm that they could be mediums, conducting two spirits, but that just didn't make sense. The connection between him and Zimm was personal and immediate, not the foreign sensation of being possessed. Still, there were memories and thoughts that clearly weren't his, and from Zimm's last words to him, she was experiencing the same haunting thoughts.  
  
Was Zimm some kind of banshee or siren who was losing control over her powers and planting ideas in his mind? No, that didn't seem right at all. She was so human in appearance, and to the touch...yet so...foreign. So...alien.  
  
Dib snapped awake at this thought, hitting his head on a low hanging metal pipe as he did so. He was in science class, thinking deeply while his classmates were scribbling a note note. He shook the pain in his head away, hoping that he hadn't been too obvious with his daydreaming. One look at the frustrated and under paid teacher told him that the glazed look in his eyes for the past thirty minutes had indeed been noticed, but Dib didn't care.  
  
"I have to go to the bathroom!" he called, grabbing his books suddenly and making a mad dash from the room.  
  
The answer was so obvious! Why hadn't he thought of it before? Alien! Zimm was an alien! Her disguise must be pretty good to fool his keen paranormal sense, but he had stumbled across the truth eventually! He stuffed all of his things in his locker quickly and raced out the front doors of the skool, eager to confront Zimm at last.  
  
  
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Severely out of breath, but not caring in the slightest, Dib ran up the step to Zimm's front door and began banging on it wildly.   
"Zimm!" he gasped, shouting like a mad man. "Let me in!"  
  
The door opened while Dib was still pounding on it, which launched him forward on his face. Picking himself excitedly, he faced the annoyed red- eyed girl, trying not to burst with exhilaration.  
  
"What do you want?" Zimm sighed, glaring at the boy in front of her. She was still in her pajamas and her hair was obviously not brushed in the slightest. She looked as if she had just woken up. "Shouldn't you be at skool?"  
  
"Alien!" Dib accused, his excitement negating any sense in his statement. He pointed wildly at her. "Alien!"  
  
"I don't get it," Zimm replied, looking at him oddly. "What is it that you want? I don't have all day to deal with your ravings."  
  
Dib panted heavily, still a little out of breath and tried again.  
  
"That's your secret!" he declared. "You're an alien! Someone from beyond the stars! An Invader!"  
  
"Invader?" Zimm repeated, the familiar word echoing in her mind. "I...I said that didn't I? Said Invaders...don't love."  
  
She thought back to the day no more than a week ago where she had blurted out the confusing word in the library after capturing Dib. She hadn't understood it then, and even now, the word hardly seemed real to her.  
  
"You're an alien Invader!" Dib exclaimed with great excitement. "Oh wow, an actual alien! I'm going to be famous for discovering this! Maybe they'll even name your autopsy video after me!"  
  
Zimm raised an eyebrow at him skeptically.  
  
"Autopsy video? Is that what you tell all the girls you kiss? That you want them dead?"  
  
"Oh...right." In his excitement, Dib had forgotten his intense feelings. In order for an autopsy to work, she had to be dead, didn't she? That was the last thing he wanted...when he still thought Zimm was human. Now....  
  
"Uh, well, sorry," he apologized, blushing a little. "I guess I just got ahead of myself." His eyes brightened once more. "So what planet are you from? What do you look like out of your disguise? When did you get here?"  
  
"An Invader...."  
  
Yes it made sense in an odd way to the girl. All the dreams of glory, of green skin and her mission. She had a mission...didn't she? She thought harder, trying to think of answers to Dib's questions. Where was she from? She had spent all of the past week with her telescope, searching the left side of the Northern hemisphere desperately for reasons beyond her. Was that where she had originated?  
  
No. It was impossible.  
  
"It doesn't make any sense, stupid, inferior Dib," she shot. "I'm no alien. In fact, I'm just as human as you are, maybe even more so."  
  
"I doubt it," Dib replied. "That may be a great disguise and all, but you're definitely not human."  
  
"Oh, really?"  
  
Without any warning, Zimm was on him, her lips ravaging his own, her hands dragging his without a second thought onto her body. Though his eyes widened considerably, Dib didn't fight it, knew better than to fight whatever Zimm was doing. It felt too good; felt too right to stop. God, each time he kissed her was magical, almost as if by simply touching their lips together, his soul was completed. His soul was hers to destroy. He pulled her closer to him, breathing in everything about her as she blended into him. He was dizzy, drunk with emotion and unable to control his own thoughts. She was intoxicating to him; absolutely intoxicating.  
  
Zimm released him gradually, watching him whimper slightly as she pulled away from him.  
  
"Convinced I'm still an alien?" she asked amusedly. "Or do I have to demonstrate further?"  
  
Dib didn't reply, as he was far too busy trying to pull himself together.  
  
"I...I...."  
  
"Whatever," Zimm sighed, quieting the butterflies which currently resided in her own stomach. "Your theory is a good one, except I can assure you that my body is quite human. It feeds like a human, requires sleep like a human...and is attracted to you like a stupid, pitiful, weak human. No, this is hardly the body of an alien."  
  
"But...." Dib trailed off uncertainly, his spine just beginning to solidify. "I...you have to be."  
  
"Well, I'm not," Zimm replied huffily. "Now, like I said before, shouldn't you be at skool or something?"  
  
Dib blinked, unable to think of anything smooth to say in response.  
  
"Shouldn't you?"  
  
Smart. Real smart. He could only hope Zimm didn't do something horrible to him for saying something so lame.  
  
"I'm sick today," she replied with a smirk.  
  
"You've been sick for a whole week and a half?" Dib questioned, beginning to regain his confidence.  
  
Zimm nodded.  
  
"Yep. The whole time. Really sick."  
  
Metal clanging could be heard in the background and Zimm paled immediately.  
  
"Uh, gotta go!" She tried to close the door but Dib was too quick for her.  
  
"What is that?" he demanded. "Is your washing machine broken or something? That sounds awful."  
  
He forced his way inside her house and peered around the hall, almost expecting some appliance to be in the process of exploding. What could sound that loud and obnoxious?  
  
"Burritos!"  
  
"What the hell?"  
  
The little green dog that Zimm had found in that strange ruin of a house was walking around her kitchen, clanging two pots together happily.  
  
"Bad GIR!" Zimm reprimanded, her hands resting on her hips angrily. "I thought I told you to stop that!"  
  
"But, Master," he whined pitifully. "My poor little tacos, everyone else is doing it!"  
  
Dib gave Zimm a lost look and she sighed.  
  
"Dib, meet GIR," she seethed, glaring at the pitiful dog thing.  
  
"I thought he was a toy," Dib stated, staring at the whining dog. "Is it some kind of robot?"  
  
"No," Zimm replied, sarcasm dripping from her voice. "He's just a normal, living green dog who can also double as a thermos."  
  
"A thermos? Really?"  
  
"Yes, really," Zimm answered irritably. "He's some kind of android, probably something experimental since all the wiring seems to be out of place. At first I couldn't get him to run, but he started right up again with some masterful electronic work on my part."  
  
"Like what?"  
  
"I dropped my keys in his head," Zimm explained. "His head has room to fit tons of crap in, so I figured he'd make a good key holder thing. He just started up once I dropped them in there and he's been running ever since."  
  
"Is that why you've missed so much skool?" Dib wondered, still staring at the robot and the chaos it was currently creating.  
  
Zimm gave him a pitying look.  
  
"What, you thought it was because of you?" she laughed. "Please. Get over yourself, Dib. No, this thing requires constant maintenance and supervision. If I left it alone, it'd probably burn my house down."  
  
"Tacos!"  
  
"Why does it keep screaming about tacos and burritos?" Dib asked, to which Zimm shrugged.  
  
"Who knows? Whoever programmed it had to be insane. The thing is nuts. I've tried to keep him locked in the attic, but he's always found a way out."  
  
Apparently getting bored with smashing two pots together, the crazy little robot threw them away and began to laugh hysterically.  
  
"I'm gonna watch TV!" he exclaimed, pushing past the two teens to the nearest room with a television.  
  
Dib and Zimm could only watch in stupefied amazement as the little robot ran past them insanely, screaming loudly about pigs and pixie sticks.  
  
"Is there an off switch?" Dib asked as soon as he rediscovered his voice.  
  
Zimm shook her head sadly.  
  
"I've looked for hours," she answered. "I tried to tell it to enter sleep mode, but it just started laughing. It won't stop."  
  
Dib looked pensive for a moment as he heard the TV click on in the other room.  
  
"Have you tried removing your keys?" he asked. "Isn't that what made it run in the first place?"  
  
"Tried and failed," Zimm sighed, holding up her keys sadly. "I have no idea what he's running on. Logistically, he shouldn't even be able to move! One of his circuits isn't properly closed which has made a short somewhere in him. Plus a resistor blew and I have no idea of where to find a resistor of the same make. So his power's cut off in parts of his body, and there isn't the slightest trace of a CPU of any kind controlling him."  
  
"And he's survived an explosion and 17 years of neglect," Dib added. "It's a miracle he's survived and running after all that."  
  
"A miracle or a curse?" Zimm made a face and craned her neck to catch a glimpse of what the robot was doing. He was sitting on her couch, staring at the television intently. "Maybe if I just keep the TV on all day, he'll be all right."  
  
"Is that a pillow he's eating?"  
  
Zimm turned around to see GIR biting a decorative pillow savagely. She had only turned her back on him for a second and already he was destroying things!  
  
"No! Bad GIR! Don't eat that!"  
  
Dib watched as the girl dashed out of the room and began a horrific version of tug of war with the robot over the pillow. It was odd how human she looked, despite the fact that she was definitely not human. The way she moved, and shouted and ran, all of it was so smooth, so human. Maybe she was right. Maybe she really did have the body of an Earthenoid, and her alienness wasn't something that could be seen with his eyes. What if she was one of those body snatchers, and she had stolen an Earth girl's body and switched souls with her or something? Hadn't that been on a cheesy episode of Star Trek once?  
  
"GIR! Give me that! GIR! Obey me!"  
  
He wandered into the next room to find Zimm still struggling with the robot dog over the throw pillow. On the TV, some crappy daytime television talk show was blaring. Not particularly wanting to watch small town teenagers argue in broken English about the paternity of their children, Dib flipped channels idly, waiting for Zimm to finish with her robot.  
  
An infomercial. Mindless children's shows. Mysterious Mysteries. The most recent-  
  
"Oh my god! Dib, go back a channel!"  
  
Dib did as he was commanded, noticing he suddenly had both Zimm and GIR's attention on him.  
  
"What, this channel?"  
  
A balding man with disturbing facial hair was on the TV, mumbling something about mysteries and how mysterious they were in a deep and soothing voice.  
  
Dib laughed to himself. Every paranormal investigator was aware of the show Mysterious Mysteries; 17 years ago it had almost been popular within certain circles. Sadly though, after Membrane's Dib had died, the show's ratings and submissions had plummeted with the loss of Dib and his loyalty to the show. Not only did the kid watch it regularly, he also supplied almost half of the show's submissions with "evidence" on his neighbors.  
  
Speaking of the Dib, there he was on the screen, pointy hair and all.  
  
"Press record!" Zimm screeched, waving her arms frantically. "I can use this for my project at skool!"  
  
"Marshmallows are fallin' from the sky," GIR exclaimed happily, which both teens decided to ignore. "Dancing!"  
  
While GIR proceeded to jump up and start dancing like a maniac on the floor, shaky footage from a home video camera appeared on the TV. Footage of an actual alien, standing under a tree and yelling at....  
  
"GIR? No way," Zimm breathed. "It's can't be GIR! He belonged to that foreign kid Zim."  
  
Sure enough, there was GIR, laughing as insanely as he was now, playing with an odd alien looking glow and being cursed at by a short little alien with huge red eyes.  
  
"It looks like Zim was more foreign than we originally thought," Dib remarked, looking oddly at the girl beside him on the couch. "Don't you think it's odd that you have GIR now? I mean, you're an alien, and apparently so was this Zim kid, so maybe this GIR thing can detect aliens. And how close is Zimm to Zim anyway? It's practically the same name!"  
  
"I don't know what you're talking about," Zimm growled, her gaze still intently on the screen before her.  
  
That alien, he was the same one in her dreams, his voice was the same one that whispered to her in the back of her mind. There could be no doubt now in her mind; whatever this Zim kid really was, he was driving her insane even beyond the grave.  
  
"Maybe you're his half-human daughter," Dib whispered, now staring in awe at Zimm. "That's why you're so human, at least in appearance. You could be half-alien!"  
  
"I'm the daughter of a 12 year old alien?' Zimm replied sarcastically. "That sounds so incredibly possible."  
  
"Well, maybe he only pretended to be 12," Dib shot defensively. "Maybe he was really older, but he had to look 12 to blend in with humans. Come on, you have to admit that it's at least possible."  
  
"All that I know is possible," Zimm remarked, resuming to watch the show before her, "is that you're just as crazy as the kid you're named after. Isn't that how Dib died, chasing after an alien? Maybe if I'm lucky, you'll meet the same fate. Stupid pathetic Dibs, chasing after insane delusions like fools."  
  
"I'm not insane," Dib shouted, pointing at the television, "and I'm starting to think that Dib wasn't either. Look, that video proves everything that we've been seeing! There's that same alien, and the same green skinned kid and Dib. Even GIR is there! How can you just ignore proof like that? All those visions we've been having aren't delusions, or seizures or anything else! They're actually real; they did happen!"  
  
"So I'm having flashbacks of my 12 year old alien father's demise?" Zimm laughed, making the insane robot on the floor laugh along with her. "That is so stupid Dib. Even for you. And what about you? Are you going to say that your father was 12 year old Dib instead of the guy who's raising you?"  
  
"I guess not," Dib conceded finally. "But you have to admit that I'm at least partially right! We have to be tied to those two in some way to be experiencing the things we are."  
  
Zimm snickered to herself as the Dib on TV was bound by television crew workers in a straight jacket for raving so insanely. If only she had a jacket for each time the Dib she knew opened his mouth.  
  
A much younger, but still just as scary Gaz sat next to Zim, frowning severely at her idiotic brother. Well, at least some things didn't change with time. Gaz seemed just as friendly there as she had when Zimm had met her. The past GIR was babbling to the show's host about squirrels and other madness, while the present GIR was pointing at the screen and laughing insanely.  
  
Zimm looked at the robot strangely, as if an incredible idea was just occurring to her.  
  
"Hmm, maybe if I built a containment field of some sort," she murmured. "Then I could leave the house without worrying about that thing destroying everything."  
  
"A containment field?" Dib repeated, and odd feeling of uneasiness wiping over him.  
  
 _Trapped in the lower levels of the base. Pounding on the stuck elevator, crying for it to open. The field behind him throbbing to an unimaginable size, but still not exploding.  
  
"It's no use, Dib. We're stuck down here. That HORRIBLE robot jammed the computer controls on his way up with his stupid, drippy taco juices of doom."   
  
"We're stuck down here? You do realize what that means, don't you?"   
  
A solemn nod in reply.   
  
"We're doomed." _  
  
"I don't think that's such a good idea," Dib stated, still feeling uneasy. "That sort of thing can backfire pretty easily. If you don't want him to destroy your stuff, why don't you just drop him off where you found him? That house seems to be indestructible as it is, and he seems to be able to survive on his own pretty well."  
  
"Maybe you're right," Zimm mused, looking at the dancing robot before her with hope. "I mean, I could go visit it when I need to, and maybe it could like, bring back information on that weird house for my project. It thinks I'm its master or something since I brought it back, so I guess it'll do what I order it to do, right?"  
  
"Um, maybe?"  
  
Zimm sighed helplessly as the robot began jumping on her coffee table, dancing with an old cereal bowl on his head.  
  
"I'll take it back there when this show is over," she vowed, rubbing her aching temples. "I don't think I can take much more of this."

 

  
  
The credits for Mysterious Mysteries rolled finally after the trio of kids and one insane robot posing as a chubby lady drove the host insane. Nothing conclusive about the green boy in question had been decided, instead only more questions had been raised. Zimm hit the button to stop recording the show and stretched lazily.   
"Well, time to dispatch GIR on his secret information recovery mission."  
  
Dib looked at her strangely, also stretching.  
  
"You mean, time to dump him off at a place he can't destroy?"  
  
"Precisely," Zimm agreed. "Now let's get a move on before he decides to touch anything else in here. He'll be happier at his own home, and he'll supply me with valuable information. We both win."  
  
"His own home belonged to an alien," Dib pointed out, causing Zimm to roll her eyes despairingly.  
  
"And I'm sure GIR's an alien robot as well, right? Like I'm an alien too?" She scoffed. "Please. You skip skool to rush over here and accuse me of the weirdest things. You really need to get a life."  
  
"And you...you...." Dib shrugged as he gave up trying to insult the girl. What was the point any more? "I'll walk with you."  
  
"I knew you would," Zimm sighed, turning off the television, leaving GIR with no immediate source of moral guidance. In his loss, he turned to Zimm.  
  
"Weenies!" he shouted, giggling hysterically on the floor.  
  
Zimm shuddered in revulsion.  
  
"Let's go...now."  
  
The walk to the ruins of the questionably foreign child's house was uneventful, save for GIR's random outbursts about randomness such things as turtles, and peanuts. Dib kind of looked amused at the creature's feeble attempts at sanity, while Zimm growled under her breath the entire trip. Dib had had it easy; he hadn't been subjected to over a week of the robot and his insanity.  
  
Finally, much to Zimm's relief, the odd green house where she had found GIR soon appeared. Without a second thought, she picked him up and whipped him at the ruin of a house, pleased to finally be rid of him.  
  
"This is your greatest moment ever, GIR!" she called as the robot ran happily inside, intent on watching Scary Monkey Reruns. "Don't fail me! I'll come check on you...one day."  
  
"That was a little harsh," Dib remarked, the little robot dog's cuteness beginning to melt his better judgment.  
  
"Not if you've just spent over a week with the thing destroying your house," she replied curtly, already walking down the street, deciding to ignore the strange noises that were now coming from within the green house. GIR was no longer her problem.  
  
"Say, Zimm," Dib began nervously, counting the sidewalk tiles as he walked, not daring to meet her eyes. "What are you doing tonight?"  
  
"Why? So you can lurk in the bushes outside my window all night stalking me? Forget it."  
  
"No," Dib insisted. "It's not like that. I ...I wanted to know if you...you know wanted to go out for dinner somewhere tonight."  
  
Zimm froze where she stood and whirled around to confront the big headed boy.  
  
"You mean...like a date?" she hissed, watching him carefully for signs of weakness.  
  
Dib gulped uneasily.  
  
"Um, yes. Maybe. Sure. It could be," he replied nervously, daring to lift his gaze to meet her knees.  
  
Zimm pondered the possibilities of such an offer. True, the boy was annoying, but he was also the key to solving the mysterious flashbacks she'd been having. Plus a free meal was hard to turn down.  
  
"You're on," she decided, her decision filling Dib with unspeakable happiness.  
  
"Yes!" he exclaimed, all hope of impressing her with his slick coolness now gone. "I'll pick you up at 5, okay?"  
  
"Whatever," she sighed, turning onto the street that would lead her away from Dib and back to the safety of her own home-which was now relatively safe with the removal of GIR. "And not a minute before then. I can only tolerate you so long; don't try to extend my exposure to you."  
  
Hours passed quickly as Zimm tried to piece together the disastrous condition her house was in due to GIR's visit. It was such a disaster, when 5:15 rolled around, she had completely forgotten Dib for the excitement of washing turkey stains out of her floor. She answered the door, dressed in her simple red dress with her hair pulled back into those accursed pigtails, simply for the convenience of not having to fight hair while cleaning.  
  
"I came late, just like I promised," Dib greeted her while she had growled menacingly at him. "I borrowed my dad's car for tonight since I don't get one of my own until I give up on paranormal studies and pursue "real science" or something stupid like that."  
  
So she had left her cleaning behind, brushing her dress off slightly and deciding that it was still suitable to wear in public. She noted quietly that Dib was wearing one of those awesome trench coats she had stolen from him the day they had went to Membrane's old house. It...suited him, almost too well for Zimm's liking.  
  
There was nothing scientific about Dib's dad's car, which surprised Zimm slightly. It was just a normal car that would belong to anyone, and certainly not the world's second greatest scientist. Dib started it up uneasily, his hands shaking slightly from a mixture of his nerves and sitting so close to Zimm while driving on their first date. First Date. Wow. Even the words sounded important and daunting.  
  
Zimm made use of her time by staring idly out the window, glaring at the familiar parking lot Dib was pulling into.  
  
"This is where we're eating?" Zimm asked horrifically, looking out her window at the restaurant's sign. "McMeaties?"  
  
"Yup," Dib answered proudly. "Why not?"  
  
"Why not indeed."  
  
After spending a good ten minutes trying to correctly parallel park, the two teens walked through the door of the most popular, and most disgusting fast food place in town, though Zimm supposed it could be worse. They could have been eating at the Krazy Taco.  
  
She sat down at a table miserably, picking at the garbage that had been left behind from the last customers.  
  
"You sure know how to sweep a girl off her feet," Zimm remarked dryly, flicking a nearby straw wrapper across the table. "This is supposed to make me want to talk to you? Dinner at McMeaties?"  
  
"Well, we could go somewhere else," Dib offered. "My dad doesn't know it yet, but I borrowed his credit card. Where do you want to go?"  
  
"We can stay here. It's fine...I guess." Zimm sulked, slouching down in her seat as if enduring Dib's presence was becoming too much for her.  
  
"Huh...." Dib drummed his fingers nervously on the table. What did one do one a first date, especially a first date you practically had to kidnap your date to show to? "Um, well, I'll go order then. Yeah. I'll order."  
  
"Combo 6 with Classic Poop," Zimm commanded, looking severely bored. "Try not to screw it up, Dib."  
  
"Right." He marched towards the counter as only a person on their first date could do: nervously and over exaggerated.  
  
The cashier was a kid his age, who looked thoroughly bored with his underpaying occupation.  
  
"Can I help you?" the cashier intoned. It was pretty obvious how dedicated he was to his job.  
  
"Yeah, I'll have one of those greasy burrito things I saw on TV a while back," Dib replied, trying to sound happy while keeping one eye on Zimm in case she decided to bolt. "With...I dunno, some salty lemonade, I guess. Oh, and a combo 6 with Diet Poop."  
  
"Which combo is number six again? I'll have to ask my manager."  
  
Dib frowned.  
  
"You work here. Shouldn't you know what each combo is? That's just stupid." He threw a worried glance back at his table to find Zimm doodling on the table with a pen she had found in the nearby comment box. Good. She was distracted enough not to flee...for the time being.  
  
The cashier looked at a long list of items from under the counter.  
  
"I'm new here," he explained, reading over the list at a snail's pace. "They didn't tell me about any of our specials." He tapped the list thoughtfully. "I don't see a number six here. I'll have to call someone from the back."  
  
Behind Dib, the line was beginning to swell to monstrous proportions, full of hungry customers who looked not at all understanding about Dib's current situation. He threw an anxious glance back at his table. Zimm was still defacing public property.  
  
"Oh come on!" Dib complained, leaning against the counter angrily. "How can you not know? There's a sign behind your head for God's sake outlining the combos! They're all on there if you'd quit being so damn ignorant and turn around!"  
  
"What?" The cashier turned slowly around, still looking confused. "I'm afraid I don't see-"  
  
"Right there! There! Combo 6! The Big and Meaty meal!" Dib screeched, pointing wildly at the giant flashing sign behind the ignorant trainee. "I want a Big and Meaty Meal!"  
  
Snickers rose from behind him, and realizing the awkwardness of the name of the damned meal, Dib flushed a deep red at what he'd just screamed for the whole restaurant to hear. He growled and grabbed the stupid cashier by his uniform roughly.  
  
"Look," he hissed angrily, "I'm on my first date ever with a girl who I'm pretty sure hates me, and I don't need you to screw it up any more than it already is! I don't care if you're new here, or if you're only getting paid minimum wage, if I suffer in any way on my date because of your incredible ignorance, rest assured you will pay. Do you understand me?"  
  
The poor McMeaties worker nodded quickly, and Dib released him from his death grip. With a threatening glare to the shocked crowd behind him, he coolly brushed off the trench coat he had worn to impress his date and tried to calm down a little.  
  
"Would...would you like fries with that?" Dib nodded passively, and slid his dad's credit card towards the cashier smoothly. The sale rang through and within minutes, Dib had his order and was free to resume his date.  
  
In his absence, Zimm had grown bored with defacing the table and had taken to shredding napkins into a surprisingly large pile.  
  
"What took you so long?" she demanded irritably. "I was kind of hoping that you were dead, or lost or something."  
  
"I'm your ride home," Dib reminded her cheerfully, and she rolled her eyes.  
  
"Whatever." She took her bagged meal from Dib and examined the contents suspiciously. "I wanted a Classic Poop, not a Diet Poop. Can't you get anything right?"  
  
Amber eyes snapped up to meet the frightened cashier from across the room. The cashier gulped and quickly hurried to the staff room to take his break before the amber-eyed nightmare could extract the pain he had promised.  
  
"Hmm, well, whatever," Dib replied, making a mental note to never come to this location again as long as he lived. "You can have mine."  
  
"You ordered a salty lemonade," Zimm pointed out tiredly. "Look, can we just go? This place is boring and stupid. Can we just go somewhere else?"  
  
"Sure."  
  
He was a bit out of his regular field of experience, but Dib was a quick learner. No matter what you did, always let your date choose where she wanted to go; life was just easier that way, especially when your date was Zimm.  
  
"Where do you want to go? Movie? Mall? Theme park? Name it and we'll do it."  
  
Zimm shot him a dirty look and made her way to the door.  
  
"Just get in the car."  
  
  
\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
Dib started the engine without a word. Zimm sure was in some weird mood. She was glaring at him, and this time he hadn't even done anything...besides mess up her drink order that is.   
"So where do you want to go?" he asked, trying his best to sound cheerful. "I've got a full tank of gas, so there's almost no where we can't go."  
  
"I want to see the stars," Zimm whispered oddly, staring out her window longingly. "I have to see them tonight."  
  
Dib frowned and tapped the steering wheel irritably.  
  
"Can't you see them from here?" he questioned. "Just look out your window or something."  
  
Zimm shook her head adamantly, giving Dib a strong glare.  
  
"No," she protested. "I've put up with your paranormal crap all day. You took me to the cheapest restaurant possible for dinner, and didn't even get a simple order right. All I'm asking is to go look at stars in an open area, and for you to take me there. Is that too much to ask from a filthy worm such as yourself?"  
  
  
\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
"Is here good enough for you?" Dib sighed, putting the car into park hopefully.   
They had driven around most of the entire city by now, and no place seemed to be good enough to meet Zimm's standards. Her pickiness made Dib wonder if she actually wanted to see stars at all, instead taking the greater pleasure in annoying him. From beside him, Zimm laughed at his misery and pointed out her window vaguely.  
  
"One more street," she insisted, taking delight in the sound of the car starting up again.  
  
She really wasn't playing with him...okay so maybe she was a little. He deserved to be tormented for all he'd done to her, just in this one day alone. Still, she did have a place in mind on this seemingly eternal journey of theirs. The memory of it stuck persistently in the back of her mind like one of those irritating popcorn kernels sticks in a tooth. Seeing that old Mysterious Mysteries show had lodged it in her thoughts and it showed no sign of relenting until she dragged Dib there with her.  
  
The car rolled to a stop slowly, as the driver of the vehicle was far too fascinated with his surroundings to think about something as trivial as stopping his car.  
  
"Here?"  
  
Here turned out to be his old elementary skool's parking lot. He turned to look at Zimm curiously but she had already exited the car and was standing near his door expectantly.  
  
"Yes, here," she replied impatiently. "Would you hurry up already? If you think you can prolong this awful excuse for a date by sitting in the car, then you're wrong."  
  
She stormed off mysteriously leaving Dib to take his keys out of the ignition in an empty, eerie parking lot in the dark.  
  
"Wait up, Zimm!" he cried, slamming his door shut. "Why are we here? Trust me, I went to skool here. There's nothing exciting here."  
  
He turned into the skool yard to find Zimm scrambling to the top of the eyesore of a jungle gym that skool children got to play with. She climbed pretty well considering that she was wearing a relatively short dress. There she sat, perched at the top of the metallic equipment, beckoning for him to join her impatiently.  
  
Given that he had no choice but to join her, he hesitantly climbed up to meet her, resting beside her on a conveniently placed pipe.  
  
"Why are we here?" he asked again, but was interrupted by Zimm's hand connecting harshly to his face. "Ow! What was that for?"  
  
"Can't you feel it?" she hissed, looking around him at the majestic night sky. "If you'd just shut up for a moment, then I'm sure that you'd feel...something."  
  
"Something like what?" After being on the receiving end of Zimm's withering glare, he shut up and closed his eyes for a moment, trying to sense whatever it was that she did in this place.  
  
He had grown up playing on this crappy exercise equipment; there was nothing special here by any stretch of the imagination. There was just the dim outline of the portables he had been stuck in as a child, the browning grass...and a...feeling.  
  
It was intoxicating whatever the feeling was, though it was still faint. He was surprised that Zimm had managed to pick up on it from so far away, but then again, being some kind of alien, maybe she had a special sense for these kinds of things. It floated around him, allowing him to breathe it into himself, to have it flow throughout his veins to encompass him in his entirety. It was magical; even the air around him was magical. There was an aura here, one that he was sure was exclusive to just him and Zimm alone. No one else could touch this, could touch them. It was a pure feeling, tinged at its very edges with a sorrow.  
  
It...it was love.  
  
 _"Why are we here, Dib?" Zim sulked and leaned against the outstretched pipe in irritation.  
  
Dib just smiled back at him, the scythe on his head bouncing as he turned around to face the alien.   
  
"We're here because...because it just feels right," he answered vaguely. "Come on, Zim. This is our battlefield, the skool ground and our day of peace is almost up. Wouldn't it be appropriate to end our truce here on this night, where tomorrow we'll meet to fight again? It's poetic."   
  
"It's stupid," Zim shot. "Stupid like most of your ideas. Stupid, inferior human and his sentimental ideas."   
  
"This day of truce was your idea," Dib reminded him gently. No amount of Zim's grumbling was going to ruin this day. It was perfect. "That was pretty sentimental to suggest. And especially remembering the anniversary of when we met. I wouldn't be pointing any fingers if I were you, you sentimental fool."   
  
"Shut up."  
  
Zim refused to meet Dib's inquisitive glance, which only made Dib laugh. Coaxing emotions out of Zim was near impossible, and Dib loved him for it. He loved him.  
  
He gazed up at the night sky just in time to see a shooting star go flashing by. Either that or a plane was crashing...well he'd just assume it was a shooting star.   
  
"Where's Irk, Zim?" he wondered, only to hear Zim scoff from beside him.   
  
"Like I'd tell you," he replied huffily. "With Tak's ship, it'd be my luck that you'd go and annoy the Tallest. They'd never forgive me if they had to put up with your never-ending madness. NEVER! Using my feelings to wrestle information is just so...filthy of you, foul human."   
  
Dib waited for a moment for Zim to stop screaming and calm down. After he had, Dib flashed a dazzling smirk at him.   
  
"So where was it again?"   
  
"Over there, to the left." Zim answered with a helpless sigh. "Just past the moon, no you're looking too far."   
  
He grabbed Dib's giant head and held it firmly in the proper direction. Dib beamed, looking at the bright, yet so distant star, enjoying the contact, however rude with Zim.   
  
"Do you ever miss it?" he asked, then blushed. "I'd miss Earth if I had to leave it."   
  
Zim let go of the boy quickly, his eyes growing brighter at the mention of his wondrous home planet.   
  
"Every day," he whispered. "I miss my own SUPERIOR people, miss not having to live in fear of FILTHY Earth water...I miss all sorts of things. But I have GIR here to remind me of my people, and I will always have my GLORIOUS mission. It fills me with enough wondrous goo to continue my miserable stay here until I am made ruler of this horrid place."   
  
"You have me," Dib whispered, looking closely at Zim's undisguised red eyes and at the reflections of the stars that swirled within them.   
  
Zim scoffed once more, shoving Dib playfully.   
  
"You?" he repeated. "Don't make me laugh. You, foul stink-creature are my enemy and I live each day to see you destroyed. I will not rest until I stand over your lifeless corpse, proclaiming victory for the mighty Irken empire and-"   
  
Dib interrupted the alien's ramblings with a quick kiss on his extraterrestrial lips. Zim flushed, flailing around in surprise while Dib laughed at his reaction.   
  
"It's okay, Zim," he replied with a grin. "I know I have you too...you horrible alien jerk." _  
  
"Do you believe in fate?"  
  
The question jolted Dib harshly out of his reverie, even though it was asked barely above a whisper.  
  
"Huh? Fate?"  
  
Zimm looked at him strangely, then turned back towards the stars.  
  
"Yeah, fate," she replied. "Do you think it really exists, or is it just some stupid idea some corporation made up to sell crap? Do you...do you think that we were fated to meet each other?"  
  
"I know we were," Dib answered honestly, finding her more interesting to watch over the stars by far. "How could we not be? It's like the entire universe is shouting at us to be together, even if we can't hear the reasons why. Why else would we have such memories, and such strange experiences together and only together? There's some hidden truth that the universe is hiding from us, like why you're such a human alien-"  
  
"And why you're so insane," Zimm finished playfully.  
  
Dib smiled.  
  
"See?" he replied. "We both know so little, but you know what? It's not important. All that matters is that you're beside me. That's all. Weird, huh?"  
  
"You could say that," Zimm sighed, looking around her for something. "Oh, Dib, I forgot that wretched dinner of ours in the car. Go get it and we can eat up here. This place is a hell of a lot better than McMeaties any day."  
  
"You have a point," Dib conceded, pleased that somehow, this date was actually beginning to turn out all right. "I'll be right back."  
  
He climbed down the metallic pipes that composed the playground quickly, while Zimm smirked. Dib was...well, insane was just about the only way to describe him. Sitting here, next to him, it almost felt...felt...well whatever this giant mystery was that bound her to Dib, it was just within her grasp. She could feel it in her brain how close the answers where to her, but still for the moment, they remained just out of reach.  
  
And as for Dib...well he was turning out to be all right...for a stalker. As horrific as this date had been so far, Zimm could actually see going out with him again. There was just something so right and fulfilling about him that made her almost want to endure his presence.  
  
The dreamy look on her face as she thought about Dib soon vanished as she felt an unearthly chill pass through her. Something was wrong...very wrong.  
  
Zimm felt rather than heard the sickening crunch of metal collide against bone. A familiar scream of pain sounded that rang through her soul. All of a sudden, the world around her halted where it was, time and reason colliding to a deathly standstill as she turned around. Oh god how she didn't want to turn around, how she feared what she would see.  
  
She had been a warrior, a brave Irken soldier, someone accustomed to blood and suffering. She had seen things that would make any human's blood curdle in revulsion and she had even caused a few of those incidents herself in her passion for destruction. She had blown up half of Irk, ruined Devastis and sacrificed inferior lives for her own personal gain. She had seen horrors beyond comparison on Food Courtia as alien races left sloppy and revolting reminders of her hatred for fast food. She had already seen so much, but this was where she drew the line. No horror, no devastation in all the universe could possibly be as frightening as the mere idea of harm befalling the boy. Of seeing Dib in pain.  
  
She had hated the boy when she had first seen him, all gaping and shocked to see an actual alien. Him and his stupid, pointy hair. He had chased her, followed her home and made her every waking moment a living nightmare. They had teased and tormented each other, laughed at each other, and when the situation called for it, they even worked together. They had lived together; they had died together. She had followed his soul to his beloved planet and become like him. A life, a mission and an eternal love had all disappeared from her in a flash of light. And now, just as she saw this life for the new beginning that it was, there was the sound of metal.  
  
She could see it all from her lofty vantage point. All of it...happening so fast....  
  
The ominous crunch of metal, of glass breaking and the sickening crack of bones splitting apart. Brakes squealed, followed by her single, horrified scream.  
  
Limp. Pooling blood. Bloody hair matting in his eyes. Lying broken on the ground.  
  
"Dib!"  
  
 _Zim! Come back here! You did this._  
  
Oh God. She remembered.

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

“Oh my god! Dib!"   
An engine quickly shut itself off, its headlights turning off and taking all of the remaining light in the dim parking lot with it.  
  
"Dib!"  
  
Zimm vaulted off the jungle gym within seconds, her heart pounding so loudly that she feared it might explode within her chest. A car door slammed shut in a hurry, the sound of hurried footsteps blending with her own against the worn pavement.  
  
"Oh my god!" It was the voice of an older man, and full of distress. That bastard! What had he done to the Dib? To her Dib?  
  
"What have you done?" Zimm screamed at the man currently hunched over the still form of her date. Rage filled every part of her soul, her heart crying out to destroy this man where he stood. He had hurt Dib! That was her job, and her job alone!  
  
"I-I...." The man trailed off uncertainly, panic filling his eyes. "He came out of nowhere! I couldn't see him at all. My blind spot...."  
  
"What the hell were you doing in a skool parking lot?" Zimm raged, her hands balling up into angry fists; torn between rushing to Dib's side and thrashing this man until he looked as bloody as Dib. "What kind of idiot are you? Have you lost your mind?"  
  
The man was pale, that was obvious even in the dim moonlight. He was shaking with terror, and rightfully so.  
  
"I'm sorry," he cried out in anguish, which did nothing to calm Zimm's rage. "I just pulled over to make a call and he was dressed in black and the light was so dim.... I had no idea....I have kids of my own...It could have been one of them. Oh God what have I done?"  
  
"You've brought the wrath of the Irken Elite upon you," Zimm snapped, her red eyes furious with rage. "You've destroyed my love pig boyfriend, the only person I love, just as I shall annihilate all those close to you. You will suffer my wrath, make no mistake of that."  
  
She advanced on the man evilly, all those forgotten years of Invader training rushing back to her brain at once. She was powerful in this not so short body. Yes....  
  
She was just about to strike when she heard a gurgling sound coming from behind her. Dib! He was alive!  
  
She whirled around and collapsed on the ground where Dib lay, barely conscious. The frightened man thanked the powers above that the girl had been distracted and immediately jumped back into his car, starting it up quickly. Zimm's eyes snapped up within seconds as she heard the telltale sounds of an engine squealing away.  
  
"I'll send help!" was the only distant cry she heard as the weasel human fled the scene of a most horrific crime.  
  
"That bastard! I'll hunt him down and destroy his family as vengeance!"  
  
"Don't...Zim," she heard from behind her, though it was very weak. "You should know better...than anyone that children don't deserve to suffer...for things beyond their control."  
  
"Dib?" Her attention immediately turned from the speeding car to the battered form of her date. It hurt to even look at him, trying not to imagine the pain he must be feeling as he lay on the pavement bleeding.  
  
Her eyes ran over his still form in silent horror, noting the paleness in his skin, made all the more obvious by the contrasting blotches of red that covered him. He was bleeding...a lot. How much longer could he hold out while losing blood at that rate? She had to get help, but with her cell phone lying on her kitchen table and no one around to watch Dib, she was stuck. She couldn't just leave him here alone! What did her training tell her? What would an Invader do?  
  
Condemning such useless thoughts, Zimm decided to ignore any Invader training she may or may not have received. It was all so foggy still, and what she did remember of it was completely useless. Something to do with tallness and nachos, both of which were useless here.  
  
"Zim?"  
  
Suddenly her decision was made for her. She was at his side in a second, cradling his bloody form against herself in desperation.  
  
"Dib?" she whispered, stroking his forehead gently, wincing at the gaping wound her hand grazed as she did so. "It's going to be okay, Dib. I promise."  
  
Dib's eyes looked far away and distant as if he could barely see Zimm not even a foot away from him. He reached out a bleeding hand and she took it in her grasp within seconds.  
  
"You always were a terrible liar," he whispered weakly, trying to smile to hide the pain that was destroying him. "I mean...skin condition...what a stupid story. Surprised...everyone bought it."  
  
"Dib? You remember? You remember who I am?"  
  
Zimm looked surprised to hear this, although she was glad to be reassured that she wasn't crazy, that she had indeed known Dib in a previous life.  
  
"It's kinda hard...to forget," he gasped, wincing as he struggled to get a better look at her. "It all makes sense now...the skool...the stars....GIR...he really does belong to you...go figure."  
  
"Yeah, go figure," Zimm repeated wistfully. "God, Dib, do you have any idea of how weird this is? I mean, I'd never believe it if someone had just told me! As soon as I heard you scream, it just kind of rushed back at me like some kind of strange...reflex...of doom."  
  
"I guess it takes a second death to fully realize your first," Dib stated dryly. "It's...like seeing your life flash...before you twice...really boring."  
  
He was fading fast by this time, for Zimm could see the struggle it was for him to even keep him eyes open, let alone talk.  
  
"Dib!" she cried, holding him tighter to her, not caring if he felt her arms around him anymore. She couldn't leave him, not even to find some to help! She wouldn't! His eyes began to droop until they finally closed, hiding the brilliant amber she loved so dearly.  
  
Panicking, Zimm felt for a pulse and to her immense relief still felt a faint one. He was still alive...for now. Her only hope for his survival was for that ass of a driver to grow a conscience and call for help. She couldn't let him die, not again, not while it was all her fault.  
  
"I wish...I wish I could feel," she whispered slowly, her gaze lost somewhere in the night sky as she cradled Dib's still form in her arms. "Wish I could feel what I used to, what I knew we once had. I wish I were me, or at least the me that you used to know. I wish I wasn't so damn weak, to need you, or care about your fate. I wish...."  
  
She traced a slender finger sadly down Dib's bloody face, watching his chest rise and fall shakily.  
  
"I wish you could have seen Irk in all its glory, or felt the thrill of stepping onto a new planet, knowing that its doom solely rested upon you. You might have understood then, why I did what I did, and why I fought you even to the end...if only you could have seen my world the way I saw it."  
  
She shook her head sadly, focused entirely on Dib's pale face, the pain of such overwhelming memories and emotions hardly seeming to matter to her in the slightest. As long as Dib kept breathing, she would be fine.  
  
"I wish I could have shown you what I saw in you," she continued, stroking Dib's hair gently as she spoke. "You were just a child when I met you, and still a child when you died. Do you know how many hours I devoted to thinking about your lifespan? It haunted me that in centuries to come, I would still exist and you would not all because of your inferior life expectancy. I thought about what I would do after you had died constantly. Would you leave behind offspring to take your place, or would I inherit the Earth by default when you weren't around to defend it?"  
  
The stars shone brightly on the tragic scene, illuminating the tears that were falling down Zimm's cheeks. Where was the ambulance? Had the driver changed his mind and decided to not only flee from the scene of the crime but to also leave his victim for dead? If only she had a cell phone on her! Damn!  
  
Dib's body twitched a little, as if he were in great pain even in his unconscious state. Was he...dying? Zimm only hugged him closer to herself at this thought, unable to comprehend a world without Dib.  
  
After all she had sacrificed to become human for him, she now faced the very real possibility of being trapped among humanity for an indeterminate time period without him. She had to keep him with her. He couldn't leave; he couldn't!  
  
She gazed up at the stars again, desperate for guidance from the place she had come from.  
  
"I wish I could turn back time," she sobbed. "I wish I could go back to hating you, to wishing you dead and away from me. I wish things were still easy like that. These emotions that I used to hate, now...I'm afraid of them. Such powerful burning sensations that bind me even to the point of being sick. I...I can't control my brain the way I used to. My PAK did all the work for me, suppressing such vile emotions that threatened me, but now I'm as lost as you always were. Freedom is a difficult thing to adjust to, isn't it? Think about it, Dib. No more mission. No more fate-of-the-world work. No duty, no boundaries, just us. Last time we only had a day in freedom, but this lifetime is for us, Dib, and don't you dare think about leaving me alone. We died together once, and I know one day we will again, but not now. Not like this. This isn't the end, Dib. I refuse to let it be."  
  
She remembered grade skool with him, listening to Ms. Bitters drone on about doom. Staring at him angrily in love.  
  
 _O brawling love, O loving hate, O anything of nothing first create!_  
  
He had glared right back at her, had splashed her with horrid cursed water and had devoted hours of his short life to proving to this failed world that she was different. And she had hated him right back, devoting her energy to foiling his plots against her, of furthering the gap between him and his peers...of destroying him. She had been inadvertently the cause of his death, and had she not died as well in the process, she knew she would have been inconsolable as the burden of that horrid knowledge suffocated her.  
  
 _Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms_  
  
How unfair was it that now in this glorious second chance at life, that she was once again forced to hold the big headed boy as he gasped for the very life to sustain him.  
  
"You're not going to die," she whispered fiercely into his ear. "If you die here tonight, you aren't leaving me on this filthy planet by myself. The way I feel tonight is the way I've felt all of my life and, I could die here right next to you and I wouldn't care in the slightest. As long as I ended up where you were. It should have been me who got hit; I made you come down here in the first place. I told you to go back to the car. God, Dib, if you say only one more thing in this lifetime, tell me this isn't my fault! How do expect me to live with the guilt of causing your death twice?"  
  
Swirling red beams bathed the area around the two teens as finally paramedics arrived on the scene. Dib's breathing was becoming raspy against Zimm's blood soaked chest and she prayed against any rational thought for his survival.  
  
Concerned rescue workers flashed flashlights in her eyes, but Zimm couldn't care less. She had never been happier to see a human in either of her two lifetimes.  
  
"Over here!" she called waving frantically as she watched her former enemy suffer. In any other life time she would have enjoyed these moments of pain, but now? "He's over here!"  
  
 _Prodigious birth of love it is to me that I must love a loathed enemy._  
  
She remembered her hate for the boy, and all of her frustration towards his efforts to stop her glorious mission. She remembered his transgressions now, and this should have been her chance at revenge; her chance to turn the tables....but it wasn't. Though he wasn't quite the Dib she remembered, he was still Dib and she was still Zim. That fact alone was enough to sustain her for another two lifetimes if it had to.  
  
The next few minutes were a blur for Zimm as Dib was stolen from her and placed on sterile sheets in the waiting ambulance. Immediately workers began their routine of hooking him up to hideous machines, all designed to monitor, replenish and stabilize in their flawed human way. Irkens...Zimm couldn't remember the Irken way of healing or of any of the glorious advances in Medicare that her previous people had made, but she did remember that whatever they were, they certainly weren't this frightening. All those noises and beeping and pointy, sharp objects sent shivers down her spine. Suddenly, faced with this terrifying scene, Dib's tired old threat of placing her on an autopsy table seemed remarkably horrific.  
  
Wires and metal were jammed into his skin, as the trained medical professionals loaded him into the ambulance. They were about to close the doors on the vehicle when Zimm forced her way in.  
  
"You aren't taking him anywhere without me," she insisted, sounding every bit as threatening as Gaz.  
  
Busy workers brushed her aside, too busy working on stabilizing Dib to care about her ravings. One of them finally took notice of the fuming girl in the bloodstained dress and politely asked her to leave.  
  
"Some one has to drive the vehicle here away," she was told. "Besides we're very cramped in here and it'd be better for your friend if you visited him later."  
  
Zimm had glowered at her, ranting about how she was the only one qualified to properly deal with Dib and had to be there should anything serious happen. If Dib died away from her watch, people would be very sorry for dismissing her.  
  
So after being forcibly ejected from the ambulance, as she was immune to both common sense and politeness, Zimm got into the car Dib had drove down there and started the engine. The keys were still in the door from when Dib had gone to open it, but Zimm refused to dwell on such things.  
  
She didn't have any real driving skills, as there had been no parents around to teach her, but she figured if the Dib-human could do it, than anyone could, including her. She was nowhere near being fit to drive as she was both stunned from the shock of the accident, and her head still pounded from the revelation of her frightening personal identity.  
  
Memories installed themselves in her mind; most of them useless things such as the time GIR used a hot iron to vacuum the carpet. There was a pounding, similar to a drum beat, banging a message into her impressionable mind about a mission.  
  
The mission. Her mission.  
  
What this mission was, she didn't really care. She'd sort it out later. The only thing that mattered right now was getting to Dib.

 

  
  
For a driver without a license and little experience, Zimm was doing fairly well. She hadn't hit any pedestrians, or swerved on to any side walks; her mind was just too focused on Dib.  
  
Not that this made her a better driver; it just quelled certain urges to drive recklessly. She found the hospital fairly quickly, as she had tried to follow the ambulance as best she could in a car she had never driven before.  
  
They were quick to transfer Dib inside of the hospital building, and surrounded him with people and machinery before Zimm could sneak towards him. It took her twenty minutes alone, just trying to parallel park her borrowed vehicle. Finally, she just turned the car off in the middle of the parking lot, giving up her attempts and blocking in at least three vehicles in the process. What did she care if it got towed? It wasn't her car.  
  
The doors to the emergency room swung open as the girl burst through them wildly. She fixed her sights on the receptionist and ran toward the desk.  
  
"I need to see the Dib," she announced desperately.  
  
The receptionist nodded curtly, all ready tired and overworked due to hospital cut backs. She took a white piece of paper out from behind her desk and grabbed a pen.  
  
"And you are?" she demanded tonelessly.  
  
"I'm Zimm and I'm here to see the Dib! Lead me to Dib, hospital slave!"  
  
The receptionist ignored her and continued writing on the paper.  
  
"And are you experiencing any coughs, or fever?" she inquired automatically, the words drilled into her mind from years of repetition. "Have you visited any foreign countries in the past 6 months?"  
  
"What? No! I'm just here to see-"  
  
"Is there an emergency number where you can be contacted?"  
  
"No!" Zimm shouted angrily, slamming her fist on the desk angrily. "This is an emergency and you can contact me by telling me where Dib is!"  
  
The receptionist sighed, and shuffled the papers on her desk huffily.  
  
"I'll see if any "Dibs" have come in tonight," she replied, thinking about her retirement and how happy she would be on the day she finally turned 65.  
  
Zimm stood anxiously at her desk watching for any sign of the woman to return with news of Dib. She paced in front of the desk, cutting off and blocking a line of potential patients that was forming to be admitted.  
  
Was Dib okay? Was he all ready dead? If he was dead and she had been cast from his side as he died, she would rain fiery doom upon the heads of those who had dismissed her. Witnessing the Dib's death was crucial to her. She had to be there to support him, to watch the light in his amber eyes dim as they had in a lifetime previous. Those eyes held the secret to where his spirit was headed, and where she needed to follow. If the incompetence of these stinking flesh bags had taken her chance from her, why she'd-  
  
"He's in the ER right now being examined." The calm, but emotionless voice of the receptionist startled Zimm back to her sterile surroundings.  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"The large headed boy," the receptionist clarified impatiently. "He's in the ER. He's listed as being in critical condition. He's suffering from severe hypovolemic shock."  
  
"And that means what? What can I do?" Zimm demanded, ignoring the growing crowd waiting to approach the desk behind her.  
  
"It means he's lost a lot of blood and it's sent him into a state of shock," the receptionist answered. "His heart is trying to pump blood that isn't there and it's putting tremendous strain on his system. He'll need a blood transfusion, and soon."  
  
The receptionist pushed a button under her desk that released a small, floating machine. As soon as it was released from the desk, it latched onto Zimm and quickly scanned her with a probing ray of electronic light.  
  
"Scanning...SCANNING!"  
  
It finished its scan before Zimm had time to react, and hovered back to the emotionless receptionist, who typed something quickly into its side panel.  
  
"According to preliminary scanning and data pulled from the patient's file, you are a suitable match to donate blood," she announced quickly, looking over Zimm's shoulder to the waiting line of grumpy, injured people. This was going to be a long night. "Stand over there where you will be escorted to the blood donation area for preparation for transfusion."  
  
"Huh? Wait a minute! I never-"  
  
Beefy looking lab technicians soon appeared out of the shadows and grabbed Zimm roughly by the arms, dragging her off into a distant room, allowing the line of needy people to access the receptionist's knowledge.  
  
  
\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
An hour later, Zimm emerged from the waiting room, still rubbing the arm the hospital staff had assaulted in their mad rush for blood. Primitive Earth methods of healing! Why back on Irk they'd...they'd...well she didn't know what her true people would do in this situation, but she was sure that it was far more sophisticated.   
All the grabbing and the pain! She didn't care if she was doing something to help Dib; it had hurt and she was angry. On the bright side, she had been given the room number where Dib had been transferred to, and since throwing a tantrum about giving blood, the lab technicians had been more than willing to supply her with Dib's whereabouts in exchange for silence.  
  
Stepping into the nearby elevator, she pushed the button for the 6th floor where Dib was located and continued mumbling to herself about the pain in her arm. She would make Dib pay for needing her to live...just as soon as he was well again. The elevator stopped, leaving her on the 6th floor alone with a maze of hallways. She had been told Dib was in the 12th room...all she had to do was find it first.  
  
Everything here was so confusing! The walls were a bland white, along with the floors, blinds and any other piece of decoration. Hallways merged and intertwined, making the first room seem no different than the 20th.  
  
Well, she'd just have to use her amazing inner Invader senses to guide her. How hard could it be to find a single room when she had been trained by elite alien leaders for...for...something?  
  
Using all of her skill, it took her twenty minutes to find Dib's room, which wasn't bad, considering that it had been a while since she had stepped foot in a hospital.  
  
The door loomed menacingly before her, daring her to enter and see the state of her Dib. She was afraid, yes, but she had to go in. She had to. She pushed the door open slowly, noticing just how dimly the room was lit. There was a deadly silence in the room, which was only interrupted by the sounds of electronic beeping and the slow, steady intake of staggered breath.  
  
"Dib?" There was no response from the still form lying on the bed. Her hand reached for the light switch that would allow her to see him better, not that she really wanted to see him. Not like this.  
  
There he was, lying on his bed, his arms folded peacefully on his chest. His messy, spiky black hair was sprawled across the pillow, crossing into his closed eyes giving him the appearance of simply sleeping.  
  
Zimm had to smile at the cuteness of the sight, no matter how tragic it seemed. When one ignored the numerous wires and monitors attached to her soul mate, along with the ugly bruises and gashes that ran along his body, he seemed positively angelic. If only he could be this peaceful and cute while he was awake. Maybe then he'd be easier to get along with.  
  
She made her way to the side of his bed and pulled up a nearby chair. She leaned over his still form, stroking his torn forehead gently.  
  
"I'm here, Dib," she whispered softly. "I won't leave you...you jerk."  
  
She rested her head against the rail on his bed, trying to synchronize his ragged breathing with her own. It was so peaceful, so completing just to be near him again, to be this agonizingly close to him....Her eyes soon closed, her mind drifting off into a blissful sleep filled with thoughts of Dib.


	9. Chapter 9

_"Stupid, stinking human! I will never give up my mission! NEVER! I cannot fail my Tallest."  
"What have they ever done for you?" he countered, the scythe of hair bouncing in indignation. "When's the last time you even heard from them?"   
  
"It doesn't matter! They're the Tallest! They don't need to call me. As an Invader, it is my sacred duty to call them."   
  
"Please, Zim, just give it up! Lie to your leaders, anything! Just don't make me fight you!"   
  
"You ask the impossible, stink-beast. A mission is a sacred duty, one that cannot be forgotten. Even in death I'll carry on my Tallest's work."  
  
"Zim...." _  
  
"Zim?"  
  
"Huh?"  
  
Zimm opened her eyes slowly, slightly shocked when she didn't immediately recall where she was. She was in a hospital, and there, lying in the bed she was leaning on was Dib! Dib?  
  
Remember your mission. Destroy him. The mission.  
  
"Dib. You're alive!" The girl felt like hugging the boy in that moment, an action that was unfortunately prevented from the mess of wires embedded in Dib. "You're actually alive!"  
  
Dib managed to smile at this, though he was obviously still in a great deal of pain.  
  
"It sure doesn't feel like it," he whispered, his voice cracking with a mixture of weakness and the drugs currently pumping through his system. "Did you stay here all night?"  
  
"Uh, no," Zimm lied, trying to fight the guilty blush that rose to her cheeks. "I completely forgot about you last night. Yep. I only came here to...ah...analyze your current weaknesses."  
  
At this comment, Dib could no longer meet her gaze, and instead, fiddled with the corner of his bed sheet.  
  
"So I take it you remember what happened last night then?" he asked curiously. "Remember about who I am...who you are?"  
  
Zimm nodded serenely.  
  
"How could I forget?" she teased. "It's not every day you find out that you're a member of a superior alien race."  
  
Dib managed to throw her a painful, and weak smile to cover up his insecurities.  
  
"It's kind of weird," he stated weakly. "How do we live our lives now, knowing what we know? Who am I really? Am I really Dib, the son of the legendary Professor Membrane, or am I just plain old Dib who I spent all my life thinking I was?" He sighed deeply. "And you? What you must be going through! Are you an alien or human, male or female? Which version of you do I care about, or do I care about you both?"  
  
"Stop thinking so hard," Zimm chided him playfully. "You have a lot of drugs in your system, but not enough to make you make sense."  
  
"Am I going to live, Zim?" Dib's eyes were full of...well not fear exactly, but dread. He had faced death before and he wasn't afraid to do it again, but he dreaded the thought of leaving this newly acquired life behind...of leaving Zimm behind.  
  
At this, Zimm shrugged helplessly.  
  
"I wouldn't doubt it," she answered. "You seem like your normal, over talkative self already. Besides, you have like half of the blood in my body running through you. Stupid nurses and their...pointy...points!"  
  
Dib looked surprised to hear this, and promptly examined his battered arms, looking for proof to back this statement up.  
  
"I got a transfusion...from you?' he repeated, to which Zimm nodded confidently.  
  
"Yep, you're full of my superior, and wondrous blood," she assured him. "Invader's blood now marches through your veins, as it does mine. Adore me for this amazing sacrifice!"  
  
Zimm waited for her adoration, but none came. All that met her was a stunned silence.  
  
"Zim? You're not an Invader anymore," Dib whispered softly, not daring to meet Zimm's eyes. "In order for a transfusion to work, you have to have human blood within you. My body can't accept...Irken blood, which means that you really are human."  
  
"So?" Zimm looked at him quizzically as if the drugs he had been given had made him lose his mind.  
  
"So, how can you be an alien Invader if you're not an alien?" Dib looked at his soul mate sadly. "Tell me, Zim, when we died the first time in that past life, why did you follow me back to Earth? Couldn't you have gone on to whatever afterlife your people have, or at least been reborn as an Irken again? Why follow me and subject yourself to humanity? You never seemed to be too big on humanity, and now to become one of them...."  
  
Zimm was stunned for a moment, completely unable to think about an answer for that. What did she even remember about her previous life? Most of her memories had been stored in her PAK, along with the ever important mission that now plagued her. The few memories that resided in her physical self were vague, particularly regarding that final tragic day. There had been a flash of light and she had disappeared, taking Dib with her in her arms. The rest had been...silence. Nothing. Blank, white noise filled with emptiness.  
  
But wait, there had been something...a final wish; one last request before fading. It...it was Dib.  
  
If the Earth could do me just one favour in return for all that I've done for it, I'd ask that it release me. Release me and give me my life back. Give me Zim.  
  
Give me Zim. And she had given herself at his request. How could she not after what she felt churning inside of her? She had heard his final request, and added one of her own: I lay down my orders...give me Dib.  
  
"I...I...I don't want to talk about it," she replied uneasily, unable to look at the hurting boy before her. What had she done and more importantly, why had she done it? "I don't remember. It doesn't matter."  
  
"But it does matter," Dib pressed, trying to sit up as he did so. "Don't you understand what that means?"  
  
"No," Zimm lied, staring at the floor defiantly. "And I don't care to know what you think it means. You think it means that I was weak, that you were important to me. Well that's a stupid idea. You could never be more important than my mission."  
  
"And what is your mission, Zim?" The words echoed through her mind, sending waves of pain throughout her body.  
  
Her mission....her long forgotten mission....All tied to that name.  
  
"My name is Zimm," she shot back at him angrily. "You keep pronouncing it wrong. It's not Zim, it's Zimm. I...I'm not who you think I am...I'm not weak, not in love...not...."  
  
"An alien?" Dib suggested playfully, and gave her a pitying look. "All that time I spent thinking about how evil you were, how devoted you were to your people...all along I never had any clue you would do something this drastic for me. That you actually cared. It's easy for me to be reborn as a human; I can interpret and relate to the memories I have of my previous life. You, well your PAK doesn't exactly translate into human terms does it? You lost everything, just for me."  
  
"You lie," Zimm sneered, fighting back her tears. "I would never-"  
  
"You lost your Irken genetics, your gender, and all those cool gizmos thingies you never told me about, like your spider legs," Dib continued, his words causing the pain in her head to multiply. "I may be the one in the hospital, but you're the one who's suffering, aren't you? It's a conflict of identity and a huge one at that. Maybe it would have been better if you never remembered the truth at all."  
  
Zimm snapped her eyes up suddenly becoming frighteningly serious.  
  
"If you remember," she hissed strangely, "don't torment me. Tell me the truth of my sacrifice. What was my mission? Tell me!"  
  
"I can't," he replied simply. "I don't remember it myself. Isn't it odd how it was the one thing that drove us apart, and now it's the one thing we can't remember? It just goes to show how stupid we were being to let it get in the way of-"  
  
"Silence!"  
  
Her shout echoed throughout the room, bouncing off the sterile walls, making Dib flinch. Her gaze was unrelentless, a sad mixture of love and hatred. Confusion dominated her eyes, though Dib could see the fear hidden deep within her. She wanted to know the truth, wanted to see herself for what she really was, yet she was afraid to find out.  
  
"Zimm?"  
  
"I will rediscover my mission," she seethed angrily, turning her back on the boy. "Once I do, I'll give it everything I have, leaving nothing for you to destroy like you did before. You were the reason for my suffering then, and you're the reason for my suffering now."  
  
She ground her teeth bitterly and began to walk out of the room. Dib tried to stop her from leaving, though he was prevented from doing so because of the numerous things he was hooked up to. He couldn't even get up to go the bathroom, let alone chase after confused fusion of human and alien.  
  
"Zimm come back!" he cried, but to no avail. "Don't do this! We only had a day together before, that was your sacrifice! You gave up your mission for a lifetime of days like that one. Don't just give up now because it hurts to remember! I'm still me and you're still you! Zimm!"  
  
The girl didn't turn when she reached the door of his room, however she did pause.  
  
"I made sure you were okay," she stated icily. "I even gave you the blood from my very veins to ensure that you would survive. This was my sacrifice, nothing else. I don't care what I look like, or what you consider me to be, but I know that I'm still an Irken warrior. I have a mission out there somewhere and I'm 17 years behind on completing it. I have to go. Never come near me again, Dib. I swear to God, I will destroy you if you ever interfere again."  
  
With those final chilling words, she slipped through the door, leaving Dib alone with nothing but his frustration.  
  
"Zim! You jerk! Come back here! This is all your fault!"  
  
He was rewarded with nothing but a chilling silence, and the damning repetition of electronic beeping.

 

  
  
The air was colder outside and crisper than it had been in Dib's stuffy room. Zimm breathed it in deeply, enjoying the smell of freedom. To her surprise, the car Dib had been driving was still in the lot where she had left it, as it had been left in a position that effectively blocked the way of any tow vehicles.  
  
Though Dib's blood still stained her dress, and her back ached from sleeping awkwardly against Dib's bed, she felt refreshed, ready to embark on her new quest to find her old mission. She was here on this Earth for a purpose, one that she was sure didn't involve Dib in anyway. She hadn't just chosen to reappear on this planet in this form for Dib's sake, for the sake of a weak emotion like love. No, there had to be something else for her to do here.  
  
Why had she even left Irk to come here in the first place? She knew it had nothing to do with Dib, as meeting Dib had been quite unexpected. She could remember that much, but why couldn't she remember what mattered most? Her mission. Her motivation.  
  
 _Isn't it odd how it was the one thing that drove us apart, and now it's the one thing we can't remember?_  
  
Dib's words still swam in the back of her mind, tormenting her with their truth. Her mission had torn them apart, had made them fight each other, made them hate...made them die.  
  
He was a threat to her mission, he had to be eliminated. She had built a containment field to hold him hostage. It had blown up, reducing her beautiful base to rubble in a matter of moments. It wasn't her fault that they had died; it was the mission's. It taunted them each day at skool, forcing them to accept their bitter fates. It had destroyed them; so why did it matter to her so much that she find it again?  
  
Because it gave her purpose. It set her mind at ease. Abandoned or orphaned in this lifetime, drifting away in the filth of humanity, she had no purpose. Well, until she had met Dib that is.  
  
But what kind of purpose is loving someone? What kind of fool would sacrifice everything they had just to be free of a system of control, just so that they could be bound and limited by love?  
  
Not her. She had had a mission in her previous lifetime, and as much as it had cost her, she needed it back; needed the assurance that she had a purpose and that someone needed her for something that wasn't just the fulfillment of emotional longing.  
  
But how had she forgotten it? If it really was so important to her, important enough to die over, why then were her thoughts on Dib? Why did she feel so empty thinking about something that had been so important to her? There were too many questions and not enough answers. She had to know the truth, had to know her mission and there was only one place on this earth where she could go to find out. She had to go back to that odd green house.  
  
Her base. Her grave.  
  
  
\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
The wind was cold as she climbed the familiar steps of the house, and pushing aside the battered men's room door, she saw that the house was in the same state she had left it in before. The addition of GIR to the house didn't seem to show, which meant either he was behaving, or the house was too battered already to show more abuse.   
"GIR?"  
  
Her voice rang through the empty room as she searched for the elusive robot dog. Was he still here? He had to be! He was the one creature who could tell her the reason she had ever come to Earth in the first place. Organic memory was weak, but the recollection of a robot was perfect.  
  
"Master? Is that you?"  
  
An energetic squeal rang through the air as a whirlwind of green rushed to meet Zimm. She picked up the bouncing robot and stared at it as if simply staring at it would jog her memory.  
  
"Yes, GIR, it is me," she answered. "I require information."  
  
"I put a fish in the coffee pot," he giggled, as if this information were both scandalous and relevant.  
  
"Not that kind of information," Zimm sighed, resting her hands on her hips. "I need you to tell me our mission, what we were doing here. Why did you come to Earth?"  
  
GIR smiled blankly at her for a second, then stiffened temporarily.  
  
"To gather information to better study the enemy, sir!"  
  
Zimm looked amused at the sudden switch in GIR's mentality, though it didn't come as a surprise for her. She had seen the wiring of the robot up close, and though she never knew how to access it, she was aware that there were two modes GIR switched in and out of. At least he was useful some of the time.  
  
"Good, GIR," she purred, hoping to get as much information from the robot as she possibly could before his modes switched again. "Now what was my mission? What was your master supposed to do?"  
  
GIR began giggling again, covering his mouth gleefully.  
  
"Hee hee...duty."  
  
"That's not an answer!" shouted the frustrated girl. Why did he have to switch modes so quickly? "You were here to gather information so that your master could do what?"  
  
"I...don't...know," he replied insanely, laughing once more like an idiot. "Why don't you ask the floaty people why?"  
  
"Floaty...people?" Zimm scowled at the vagueness of the reply she received. This machine was impossible!  
  
"You know, the floaty, scary, green people," the robot replied huffily as if the very question was absurd. "The Tallies!"  
  
"The Tallest!" Zimm exclaimed suddenly, feeling for once like hugging the infuriating robot. "I'll just contact my Tallest! Excellent! The explosion only knocked out a few levels of the house. Judging from the size of it, and the amount of damage it did to the outside levels, the shock could have been absorbed by some of the lower levels, leaving at least one communication screen operable! Ingenious! Who better to ask than the very leaders who assigned me to this planet!"  
  
She stopped for a moment, thinking about her plan.  
  
"I hope they don't take my memory loss as a sign of weakness. I'll just have to explain to them the delicacy of the situation."  
  
She walked over to the long tunnel that had led her and Dib to the level of the explosion. If her memory served her well –which it didn't- she would be able to reach a working communications panel from this point, provided that the computer was somehow still online. She gingerly stepped into the hole, sliding down into the hidden lower levels of her former base. She exited, face first into the same ash covered level she had been on before with Dib.  
  
It was still as haunting as she remembered it, but now it had the added creepiness of being the confirmed site of her former body's grave. If that wasn't eerie, she didn't know what was. She strode gingerly through the ash, trying to appear confident, though her insides were quivering at the thought of walking through her potential superior remains. Why did she have to be incinerated? Why couldn't there have been a body for her to avoid?  
  
Another tube, one less damaged than the previous one waited for her across the room. It was odd that this one would be working better than the one she had just used, but she guessed that made sense. If she had died here with Dib, then there had to be no available exit out of the level. If the one leading to the surface was damaged now, it had probably been damaged years ago too. Since she and Dib had not escaped their deaths, this working tube had to have been out of reach.  
  
Shrugging off the awkwardness of trying to remember her semi-forgotten death, she descended down the tube to a smaller, and deeper level and exited quickly.  
  
Ah. She recalled this place. It was faintly impressed into her mind, but she could still feel the familiarity of this level. She had made several calls from here, but to who, and when?  
  
Consoles lined the walls, and much unlike the rest of the base, this level looked almost untouched by the explosion. There was a giant view screen, lined with metallic writing all in a foreign script. Irken.  
  
She pushed a button, not entirely sure what the caption beneath it said, but convinced that it was the right thing to push. The view screen sprang to life before her, filled with an irritating static.  
  
"Computer? Computer?"  
  
She tested out the idea of using the computer to dial the number she wanted for her, as she was sure it used to do, but there was no response. The base still worked for the most part, but the AI controller within it must have been killed off when she was. If she wanted to use the computer's resources, then she'd have to reinstall the house's brain. Since that sounded especially daunting to the girl who was failing math, she decided that if she wanted anything done right, she would have to do it herself.  
  
Using her inner intuition, she pressed buttons, drawing up strange menus and scribbles. Screwing up her courage, she chose one of the scribbles on the menu she was presented with and hoped for the best.  
  
The screen which was once filled with static suddenly went black as the selected numeric pattern was dialed. Black soon faded, to reveal the faces of two very tall, and very curious green skinned aliens.  
  
"Zim?" The red eyed alien spoke the words fearfully, as if he wasn't sure what emotion he should be feeling as he looked at the signal's transmission origin.  
  
"I thought he was dead," the purple eyed one gasped, looking at the number that identified Zimm's console. "He hasn't called in what, twenty years?"  
  
"Seventeen," Zimm corrected proudly, gazing at the long forgotten faces before her. Intuition had served her well, and slowly, memory was seeping back into her brain. Almighty Tallest Purple and Red!  
  
Red looked confused at the sight before him, wondering if this was some kind of sick joke.  
  
"You're...not...Zim," he stated, looking at the red eyed girl before him. "You're one of those...Earthenoid...thingies...."  
  
Zimm's enthusiasm dampened a bit at this statement, but she quickly recovered.  
  
"No," she declared, "I'm not a human, I am ZIM! Mighty Irken Invader! It has been a while since we last talked, my Tallest, but I assure you, I can explain."  
  
"Is Zim dead?" Purple demanded excitedly. "He has to be, for a planet to have gone unconquered for so long! By this time, I'd expected him to at least have blown half of Earth up. Look what he did to Irk!"  
  
"Well, there was an explosion," Zimm began, beginning to feel a bit left out in this conversation. "But that was a while ago, and actually it's the reason that I-"  
  
Red's eyes narrowed at the babbling human.  
  
"Look, is Zim dead or isn't he?" he demanded. "And how did you get this number anyway?"  
  
"That's not important," Purple interrupted. "The thing is, when Zim didn't call in for so long, we kinda thought he was dead. We even threw a party...er...a funeral memorial for him. For him to suddenly be alive, it's, well...embarrassing. Do you see our dilemma?"  
  
Zimm nodded, relief washing over her at her former leader's words. They hadn't forgotten about her, as she'd feared. They even had a memorial party for her!  
  
"My Tallest," she began again, beaming once more. "I realize the awkwardness of the situation, but allow me to explain who I am, and why it's vitally important that I call you."  
  
Red gave Purple a bored look and shrugged.  
  
"Whatever," he sighed. "This should be good for a laugh."  
  
"Thank you, my Tallest," Zimm gushed, bowing slightly before the regal figures. "You see, seventeen years ago, I was trying to secure my base against that horrible Dib creature, and it resulted in a horrific explosion that caused both mine and the human's death. Fortunately, I was able to reincarnate to resume my mission, only things Instead of rebirthing as an Irken, somehow the pull of this planet and the last being to see me alive resulted in my current appearance."  
  
The two Tallest stared at the girl for a moment, then within second s of each other, burst into hysterical laughter.  
  
"You're telling me that Zim was killed and turned into you?" Red laughed. "That is too funny!"  
  
"Zim? A girl? A human girl?" Purple looked like he was about ready to explode from laughter at any second.  
  
Zimm stared at her former leaders undaunted by their reactions.  
  
"Yes," she replied firmly. "The Dib...he...I faltered for a mere second and in turn, I was punished by being formed to suit his final wish. It is a mistake that I will pay for dearly in this lifetime." She looked sincerely at her snickering Tallest. "But, Sirs, I assure you that this minor setback has not affected my resolve to complete my mission. I am fully ready to use this weak form as a clever disguise for my insidious evil."  
  
"Uh huh." Red appeared to be calming down from his fit of laughter to just looking amused. "See, the problem with that Zim is that Operation Impending Doom 2 has been over for almost fifteen years now. We're already the rulers of most of the civilized galaxy, so to add your planet to our empire is kinda pointless."  
  
"Yes," Zimm purred delightfully, recalling now crucial lapses in her memory at the sound of the name of her mission. "Impending Doom 2. I'm supposed to destroy this planet! That's my mission! I have to conquer this planet!"  
  
"But look, you don't have to conquer anything since Operation Impending Doom 2's been over for a while now, and Earth's a rock of desolate wasteland for all we're concerned," Purple assured her. "You'd just be wasting your time...Zim."  
  
"But-" Red snickered. "Well, Zim, it's been nice talking to you again. Why don't you call back when you reincarnate again? Maybe as a squid or something."  
  
He turned to leave, but Purple interrupted before the signal could be cut off.  
  
"You're sure Zim's dead though, right?" he asked curiously. "The real one?"  
  
"I am the real one!" Zimm protested weakly, watching as her beloved leaders rolled their eyes and turned away.  
  
"Yeah, sure whatever. Good luck, kid. Anyone who actually wants to believe that they're Zim in any form needs all the help they can get."  
  
The screen flashed off, leaving Zimm too stunned to speak.  
  
"But...I am Zim," she whispered to the dark screen. "Why won't anyone believe me? I'm part of the Irken Elite; a soldier!"  
  
Her thoughts wandered to Dib, the only person who would believe her, and yet the one person to blame for her predicament.  
  
Without Dib, she would never have had to build a containment field that would explode. Without Dib, she could be in the afterlife, or at the very least, in a better reincarnation than a filthy human. Dib was the reason she had failed her mission, and the reason her own people didn't recognize her. Dib was the source of her inner conflict, the one haunting voice that rang through her mind at all times of the day and night.  
  
And those eyes. They watched her in sympathy, in pity even as he himself suffered because of her. What a force he was, even as frail, stinking human. As much as she fought against it; she knew he loved her, loved her enough to die for her. It was odd how much she hated him...yet loved him at the same time. There was something there...lurking beneath the surface that wasn't there before...a kind of peace, a reassurance. A desire...a desire for that same horrible human who caused all of her problems in the first place.  
  
No! She didn't love him! She couldn't! Red eyes blazed in infuriation. Here she was seventeen years later and still he was doing all the same horrible things to her mind that he did in a previous lifetime! It had to stop!  
  
She would prove herself to everyone, prove that she could still be a force to be reckoned with even in this insanely weak form, prove that she didn't need Dib. The Earth and all its inhabitants would be hers to wreak havoc upon, starting with the Dib.  
  
It didn't matter if she had just barely a day ago saved his life; that only gave her the chance to destroy him again. Yes, it was seventeen years late, but soon -very soon- revenge would be hers.

 


	10. Chapter 10

Dib was released from the hospital a week later because of his incredible progress. He was in no danger of dying, and was becoming restless lying around each day, waiting for Zimm to reappear. When she didn't come back to apologize, he'd gotten worried, and in his worry, he had badgered the staff until their breaking point with his babbling. They probably would have discharged him early anyway, simply to be rid of his endless rants about the safety of Earth.  
  
Physically, he was doing better than could be expected for someone hit by a car. His injuries had actually seemed more threatening than they really were, since the greatest threat had really been the amount he had lost. He suffered from a mild concussion, and a few broken bones, but they were quickly regenerated using the devices Professor Membrane had perfected during his lifetime.  
  
The thought of one of his former dad's inventions helping him warmed Dib's heart. He could only imagine what he would do if Membrane were still alive. Sure he had gotten to know Membrane during his childhood, but the knowledge of his past life had still been hidden from him. The thought of introducing himself to Membrane as the reincarnated form of his son amused Dib.He could just see his dad's reaction: one weird look and a speech about the benefits of SANITY.  
  
As annoying as Membrane's speeches against paranormal investigation had been, Dib found himself missing them. At least Membrane had feigned an interest; his current dad hadn't even visited him in the hospital. His dad would know about his son's absence and injuries only when the hospital bill came.  
  
Any normal person would have taken nearly being killed by a car as an excuse to miss skool for a least a week, but Dib was far from normal. He had to go to skool, if only to check on Zimm. The girl had frightened him with talk about resuming her mission, and he had no idea what the spontaneous girl was planning. The exact details on Zimm's -or rather Zim's- mission were still pretty fuzzy, but Dib figured it had to be something not good if he had died to stop it. After all, how many ways could one interpret the title "Invader"? Zim had to have been assigned to destroy, and if the emotionally unbalanced Zimm decided to pickup where she left off, who knew what damage could be done?  
  
So he managed to drag himself to skool on the Tuesday morning after being released, though he still felt pretty awful. He was a mass of bruises and scrapes, and looked like he lost a fight to a blender in some areas, but he was determined. He was strong; he would survive on sheer determination, simply because of Zimm.  
  
Somehow he dragged himself to first period, which of course was the sociology course that he shared with Zimm. To his relief, she was there in the back, doodling like a woman possessed in her notebook. Where those...blueprints?  
  
He collapsed in his desk, regretting sitting down so hard as his aching body reminded him that he was still healing. What was Zimm up to?  
  
The same old burned out teacher that Dib annoyed so badly entered the room, sipping a coffee and wishing for a career change. He saw Dib sitting in his desk and shuddered inwardly. He had hoped that Dib's extended absence would have been...longer.  
  
"Okay class!" he announced glumly. "Today's the final day to hand in your assignments and the first day of presentations. I actually expect to see completed projects here people!" He looked at his sleeping or glazed over students with contempt.  
  
"Well, one of you had to have done something!" he urged, as he felt another one of his hairs turn gray. "At least one of you!" He looked randomly for a completed project. "Dib? I know you have to have something!"  
  
Dib gave his teacher a sheepish look, and winced in pain as his bruised leg hit his desk with surprise.  
  
"Um, I just got out of the hospital," he explained, shooting a glance at Zimm every few seconds. She was still drawing intently. "See this car hit me, and they still haven't found the guy who did it, but the important thing is that I'm still alive and-" Seeing that his excuse was getting him nowhere, Dib sighed. "I left it at home."  
  
"You left it at home?" the horrified teacher repeated in absolute shock. "Dib, you're the only one who hands in things and even you...." His right eye began to twitch wildly. "Just get up to the front of the class and present what you remember!"  
  
"But-"  
  
Dib's protests fell on deaf ears as the teacher hung his head and simply pointed to the front of the classroom. Why had he ever thought he'd like this job?  
  
Dib complied with his teacher somewhat reluctantly, and limped slowly to the front of the class. He cleared his throat nervously, gazing out into the classroom, noting that only Zimm appeared to be awake, though she was occupied with her scribbling.  
  
"Um...For my project I studied Zimm," he began, for once immensely thankful that no one in his class seemed to listen to him. "Yep...she's an alien you know. She may look human, and sound human, but deep within her lies the heart of an evil alien invader. Neat huh? But all things aside, even though she's crazy, and I'm pretty sure that she hates me, I know that deep down, I'm in love with her. I always have been, and I always will be, no matter what she says or does to me." He stared at the girl in the back intently as she scribbled. "I've been obsessed with her since the day I first saw her enter Ms. Bitters' class, which is pretty sad...trust me I know that already. But I'd do anything for her. I'd die with her...I'd die for her."  
  
"I think that's enough, Dib," the teacher sighed from his desk. "No one cares about your pathetic feelings, though according to the skool board, I have to reward you for showing some attempt at friendship to your fellow students. Your project gets a C since as usual, you were the only one to complete something."  
  
"Um, I can present my project."  
  
Dib's gaze immediately locked onto the owner of the voice. Zimm sat in her desk, with her slender arm raised, looking especially evil. While Dib looked nervous, his teacher seemed to be thrilled...or at least as thrilled as he could be while teaching.  
  
"Go ahead Zimm."  
  
The girl made her way to the front of the classroom, ignoring Dib's stares entirely. She cleared her throat importantly and glared harshly at Dib, who was still standing in shock to her left.  
  
"I did my project on Professor Membrane's crazy son Dib," she announced, receiving the same amount of attention from her classmates that Dib had. "Dib was truly insane, as he thought everyone and everything was from outer space. He was even committed to the Crazy House for Boys once by his classmates for shrieking like a howler monkey in class, which only proves his ill mental health. Luckily for society, this menace was killed before he was allowed to further spread his lies. He died while harassing his perfectly normal classmate, Zim in a fiery explosion."  
  
"Zim wasn't normal!" Dib interrupted suddenly. "He was an alien! An alien!"  
  
"He had a skin condition," Zimm corrected rudely. "Dib picked on and teased children who were different than he was. He hated poor Zim and took every chance to ruin his life."  
  
"Dib loved Zim," Dib argued, staring down the ferocious looking Zimm. "He wasn't trying to ruin Zim's life, he was just trying to keep him from doing something stupid."  
  
"Well Zim hated Dib," Zimm retorted angrily. Her hands clenched her notebook tightly in anger as she glowered at Dib. "He hated him so much that he didn't care if he died so long as Dib was dead."  
  
"That's a lie!" Dib countered, his voice charged with emotion. "He never meant to die; the explosion was an accident! And he loved Dib back! I know you did! You held me as we were dying, you know you can't deny that!"  
  
Zimm turned her back to the boy, not wanting him to see her conflicted emotions.  
  
"So? It was an accident!"  
  
"An accident? Compassion was an accident? I told you I loved you with my dying breath!"  
  
"And I was deaf so it didn't count!"  
  
Their teacher finally rose from his seat, greatly annoyed with the sudden turn that this presentation had taken.  
  
"Sit down both of you!" he roared, waking up some of his other students as he did so. "This has gone on long enough! I think we've heard enough to justify an in depth series of psychological testing on the both of you! Just...sit down."  
  
The two students complied immediately, each of them sitting at their respective desks. Dib turned around to glare at Zimm while she childishly stuck her tongue out at him. His eyes narrowed.  
  
"You jerk."  
  
"Dib! Eyes forward! The both of you will be expected to stay after skool today for detention."  
  
Dib sighed with frustration. Great. Just what he needed: to be stuck in detention with Zimm when she obviously didn't care about his feelings, or about the feelings she had once professed for him. This was just great.  
  
The rest of the day passed quickly for Zimm since Dib was thankfully not in any of her other classes that day. He tried to sit near her at lunch, but she had cleverly avoided him and eaten outside. Today was so far going almost terrifically to plan. While Dib was whining and complaining about a detention, she welcomed the punishment openly. Finally, an actual excuse to stay after skool without suspicion.  
  
Dib had played almost too well into her hands with his wild emotions. Well, what could she expect? After all he was just a human. She'd lied throughout her entire presentation, and if Dib had just calmed down, she was sure he would have seen that. She knew that the explosion had been an accident, that Dib really had told her that he loved her...that Zim really had loved Dib. The thought of him not loving the human boy was absurd; after all, her current form was the direct result of Zim's love. Stupid pathetic Dib and the emotions he made her feel.  
  
Well all that would change today. Today she'd have her revenge on the big headed boy once and for all, while at the same time striking fear into the hearts of the humans of the neighborhood. Her plan was devious and filled with evil and it warmed her heart to be scheming against humanity once more. How she'd missed her crazy schemes, and the visions of an Earth enslaved to her will. So what if the Irken Empire didn't want Earth to be conquered? She'd just conquer it for herself then!  
  
The bell rang like it usually did at three, and Zimm confidently made her way to the detention room, clutching her notebook to her chest tightly. This was it. This was what she had been waiting for. Finally, a chance to prove herself.  
  
When she opened the door to the room, she found Dib waiting for her, leaning on a desk and looking characteristically upset. Zimm just had to roll her eyes at the sight of him. Honestly, he was just too dramatic at times!  
  
"Zimm," he said bitterly. "I see you decided to show up after all. You're not too busy chasing after your stupid mission to show up for detention?"  
  
"Cease your babbling, filthy worm."  
  
With that heart-warming comment, she took a seat near the back of the room and stared at the wall farthest away from Dib. This did nothing to deter Dib however' he'd faced greater challenges than the cold shoulder before.  
  
"You left me alone in the hospital," he accused. "I kept waiting for you to come back, to come to your senses but you never came."  
  
Zimm gave the whining boy a pitying look.  
  
"Why was it scary?" she mocked. "Poor little Dib, all alone in the dark."  
  
Dib's face flushed a deep crimson at the cruel implication.  
  
"Shut up Zimm! I don't know what your problem is, or why you seem to hate me lately, but I don't need this. Not from you."  
  
Zimm merely shrugged and looked at her nails as if he were boring her.  
  
"Whatever Dib," she sighed, staring at the ceiling. "I don't see a supervising teacher here yet, so I'm going to go to...the bathroom. Yeah, the bathroom. I trust you won't follow me there this time."  
  
She stood up quickly, knocking her precious notebook that was lying on her desk onto the floor in the process. She glared at Dib, a gesture which he returned.  
  
"What are you up to Zimm?" he demanded, his paranormal senses beginning to sense something amiss. "Who has to go to the bathroom that suddenly? It's a little too convenient."  
  
His words fell on deaf ears, as Zimm was already in the process of opening the classroom door.  
  
"I don't know what you're talking about."  
  
Dib sighed hopelessly, knowing that she was probably up to something and there was little he could do to persuade her to reconsider.  
  
That nagging feeling that had torn him apart in his previous lifetime was back in full force. Zimm was up to something and he had to stop it...but how? He didn't even know what she was planning! Or did he?  
  
The forgotten notebook lying on its side behind Zimm's empty desk caught his eye, renewing his hope. Dib picked up the dropped notebook curiously. Flipping through the pages, he didn't know whether to be touched, or frightened. A page would be filled with hearts decorated with his name, while the page next to it would be covered in angry scribbles decrying his crazy notions of her loving him. He flipped to the most recent page hoping that it would be more helpful than the other entries. As it turned out, it was.  
  
In tiny handwriting and detailed drawings was a sketchy, but plausible plan. A detailed blueprint of the skool was stapled on the page, covering angry scribbles detailing a hideous plot. She was headed for the furnace room! A thousand thoughts rushed through Dib's head as his mind whirled into action, desperately thinking of a way to prevent this catastrophe from happening. He had to play on her emotions, to make her realize that she wasn't an Invader! But what on Earth would actually get through to Zimm that she was human now? A brilliant idea struck him suddenly and he dashed down the hallway towards the art room.  
  
  
\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
Zimm chuckled to herself at her own brilliance. Her plan was perfect. Every child dreamed of setting their skool ablaze, and she was actually going to go through with it. It was the perfect target after all. It symbolized her struggles in her previous life at skool and with the skool children who had tormented her, and at an even deeper level, it would broadcast to humanity the limits of their own pitiful knowledge. Her devotion to the Irken empire would blaze like the flames that would devour the human institution and she would stood back and watch gleefully as Dib panicked inside the doomed building. And as an added bonus, the time off of skool while they tried to repair the damage she had caused would be nice too.  
  
Yes her bathroom excuse was particularly clever, though she doubted that it would hold off Dib for long. She only had so much time, so she had to be quick. The furnace room was easily located since she had spent hours poring over the skool blueprints. It was indeed amazing what you could find on the Internet.  
  
The plan itself would be surprisingly simple, especially with her in-depth knowledge of wiring. All she had to do was reroute some of the key wires, bypass some resistors and the circuitry would get so hot that flames would emerge. Add those flames to an old and cranky furnace, plus a few oil soaked rags and voila- you had a fire effective enough to take down the entire skool. She opened the circuit panel, and took a quick view of the circuitry before her. Simple. It was child's play for a superior being like herself to tamper with the old system. This furnace looked like it hadn't been updated in over twenty years. No wonder their skool was always so cold.  
  
She worked quickly, expertly crossing wires and calculating the needed voltage to short out the necessary resistors within seconds. Yes.... already she could feel the wires begin to warm beneath her fingers. Her plan was going perfectly so far. But then-  
  
She froze, as suddenly her back felt cold...felt...wet. She turned around to see Dib, holding a water balloon in his hands and the remains of another water balloon beside her on the ground.  
  
"Dib!" she growled, seething rage with every fiber of her soul. "You."  
  
Dib smirked and tossed the remaining balloon in his hand playfully.  
  
"What kind of superior being can't handle a little water balloon?" he questioned deviously. When he saw Zimm's look of rage, he quickly wiped the smile from his face and became serious. "Seriously, Zimm, as much as I'd like to see the skool burned to the ground, you know I can't let it happen." When she made no move to correct him, his eyes grew big and watery as emotion got the better of him.  
  
"God, Zimm don't make me fight you again; not in this lifetime. It kills me inside, but if you won't listen, then I have no choice. I have to stop you."  
  
This comment brought a smile to Zimm's lips and she relaxed a little, appearing to be very amused at this statement.  
  
"What are you going to do?" she inquired, a devious smile gracing her lips. "Are you going to kill me? You'd kill your stupid soul mate?"  
  
Dib never flinched, never backed down. He stared deeply at the girl before him, his soul crying over the injustice of this situation while his face remained emotionless.  
  
"If I have to."  
  
The words ripped themselves from his mouth like daggers, cutting his heart as they forced their way out of him. He didn't want to say it; didn't want to admit the truth, but that horrible admission was the truth whether he liked it or not. He was Dib. It didn't matter if he was Membrane's son, or just some kid off the streets; it was his sole responsibility to protect the Earth from Zim in any form. It didn't matter if Zim was his soul mate, or if the idea of causing the death of someone he had begged fate to restore to him made him sick. In the end, nothing mattered, so long as humanity was protected.  
  
"Brave words," Zimm replied coldly, though her heart just wasn't in them. How could she deny the guilt, and desire that ravaged her soul with she stared at him? Did she really hate him so badly that she wanted him dead, or even to suffer in the slightest?  
  
Of course she didn't. In fact, she didn't hate him at all, but that was beside the point. She still had her mission and the satisfaction she received from that was all that she needed...right?  
  
From behind her, a wisp of smoke drifted into the air, followed soon after by a tiny orangeish-yellow flame.  
  
"This is your last chance to turn back," Dib warned, but Zimm only laughed.  
  
"I could say the same thing to you, pitiful Dib," she replied. "If I were you, I'd leave while I still could."  
  
The smoke between them began to grow even denser as the small flame suddenly erupted into a large one, consuming the panel of wires as it grew.  
  
Dib aimed for the flame with his remaining water balloon, only to be tackled to the ground by Zimm. The balloon missed its target, landing on the ground only feet away from the boy. An ominous boom shock the small area as the now throbbing furnace was engulfed in flames and was coming apart piece by piece. Debris flew across the room and disappeared into the billowing smoke.  
  
Zimm tried to stand to escape, but as she did so, a relatively small shard of metal struck her head and drove her to the ground away from Dib. Dib blinked, trying to stay as low as possible to avoid both the smoke and flying debris, desperate to find Zimm.  
  
"Zimm? Oh god, Zimm answer me!"  
  
Dib crawled over to where he had last seen the girl, coughing on smoke as he moved. It was agony on the endless bruises on his body to crawl but he didn't dare stand, lest he hit something he couldn't see. Besides, smoke rose and his father had always drilled basic fire safety into his mind. Stay as low as possible. He could only hope that Zimm was doing the same...if she was still alive.  
  
The thought of Zimm dead made him sick to his stomach. He would give anything just to hold her again, to feel her breathe against him just as long as she was breathing! He should have known better than to expect Zimm to listen to him or to give up her mission, or at least the mission she thought she had. She had already chosen her mission over him in another lifetime, why had he expected her to change now?  
  
Damn her mission! Damn the Tallest and Dib's own sense of duty! He would give anything to start over, to never have learned the truth about him and Zimm, but he knew that was impossible. They had already been given a second chance at life, and they had somehow managed to screw it up.  
  
Somehow, love had failed them. Love wasn't enough to sustain them; they had to be petty and try to resume roles that had been dead for years. He had failed a second time and the knowledge burned his heart. Zim, in whatever form he assumed, was out of his reach, yet Dib didn't know how to let go of the feelings inside of him. He was a fighter; he couldn't just give up now. If Zimm died here today because he failed to protect her, then he'd die himself if only to be with her in Hell. They were inseparable and no mission, or rejection could change that. He would always be there by her side, if only to put an end to her madness.  
  
His hand grasped something soft, and his heart leaped into his mouth.  
  
"Zimm? Is that you?"  
  
He crawled further and realized that it was indeed Zimm lying on the ground. From what he could see, there was a nasty looking gash on her forehead that was dripping blood down her beautiful face, but other than that, she appeared to be fine. She was still breathing anyway, and that was all that Dib could ask for.  
  
"Zimm? Can you hear me?"  
  
There was no reply to his whisper, which complicated the situation greatly. He had to get them out of there or they'd both die in a fiery blaze. Time was running out, but in his weakened condition, he doubted his own ability to escape, let alone an escape while trying to drag Zimm out with him. He had to wake her! Maybe she was just unconscious. Maybe she had just fainted and could still be awakened. It was his only chance of escaping.  
  
He tried pinching her arm, or shaking her body gently, but nothing seemed to help. Driven by desperation and fear, he placed his lips on hers and kissed her with all the intensity locked within him. The heat burned at his heels as he felt the fire getting ever so closer to their intertwined forms, but he didn't care. Let death come...again. As long as he had Zimm there with him, he was ready for whatever came to them.  
  
Just as he was saying his last prayers, he felt a stirring from underneath him, and he felt the weak flailing of arms hitting him. He brushed the hair out of Zimm's eyes, only to find them open and glaring with red fury.  
  
"Get off me!"  
  
A hand collided with his face, which, despite the pain, made Dib smile. Even when facing an uncertain death with possible head trauma, Zimm was still Zimm. Even though he risked further harm, he embraced the girl happily, delighted to see that she was still alive.  
  
"Zimm! You're awake! I thought-"  
  
"You thought what?" she demanded, rubbing her aching head while trying to detach herself from Dib's embrace. She decided to ignore the blood on her hands, and the billowing smoke that was creeping closer to the pair. All of that was unimportant, provided that her mission was safe. "You thought you could get away with kissing me while I was unconscious? Get off me!"  
  
Dib quickly released her as his mind gradually began to shift back to reality. They weren't safe; they had to get out!  
  
"Look, Zimm, we have to go," he announced, grabbing her roughly by the hand. "We've been lucky so far, but I don't think that this fire is going to be put out any time soon. If we don't leave now, we'll end up dead."  
  
Zimm reclaimed her hand from Dib's grip angrily.  
  
"Then die," she spat. "Who'd want to live as a human anyway? You're just jealous because my plan is working for once."  
  
"Working?" Zimm's logic was beginning to hurt Dib's head. This is what she defined as successful? "Your plan will kill us both...just like last time."  
  
Though she tried to hide it, Zimm's eyes softened at these words, and her fierce determination faded slightly.  
  
"Like last time...."She trailed off, unable to control the images running through her mind.  
  
Pain. Suffering. Confusion. Searching for Dib as the light blinded her. Filled with regret. The look in his eyes as his life faded from him in her arms. Limp as a child's doll. Glassy amber reflecting the light towards her.  
  
"No!" She shook her head violently, refusing to believe the memories burned into her brain. "It's not true! I'm an Invader! I am ZIM!"  
  
"No you're not!" Dib's words rang loudly through the room against the roar of the flames. He only hoped they were loud enough to get through to Zimm. "You are not an Invader. Maybe you were once, and maybe you were some glorious superior alien, but look at you now! Look at your hands! That's your blood on them! Human blood. You're a human, Zimm. You chose this for yourself once and if you regret it now then that's your own fault!" He threw an anxious glance over his shoulder, seeing immediately that they were running out of time. "History has a funny way of repeating itself. Here we are again, in grave danger because of your damn devotion to a cause that died years ago and guess what Zimm? You're going to have to make a choice. Again."  
  
"A choice?"  
  
"Humans don't conquer humans," Dib shouted. "That's what starts wars, and causes only misery. I won't let you do that to humanity, not again. I refuse to live another life devoted to fighting you because of your delusions. I want the life promised to me, the one you chose when you chose to come back. So here's your choice Zimm: give up chasing after the ghosts of your former life, or die here today with me in the mess you created."  
  
Zimm scoffed, her eyes beginning to burn from the smoke and her resolve fading. How could he be so cruel? Who was he to ask that of her?  
  
He was Dib. Her Dib, the Dib she loved.  
  
 _I lay down my orders. Give me Dib._  
  
She had wanted this life; this chance at happiness that she never thought was possible, but it all seemed so far away. The blood on her hands called to her, forcing her to grasp a reality that she couldn't bring herself to accept. She was human. She had given everything she held dear...including her mission...but for what? To die again in the basement of her skool with a soul mate that only wanted to love her?  
  
Suddenly her mission just seemed so...hollow. It would never make her happy, not as happy as Dib made her anyway.  
  
"Dib," she whimpered, reaching out and holding the boy close to her tightly. Tears streamed down her face, but she didn't care. She was in Dib's embrace and that was the only place she ever wanted to be. "I'm so sorry. I...I..."  
  
"It's okay," Dib whispered soothingly, tears of his own in his eyes. "We have to get out of here. Do you know where the nearest exit is? I think we can pretty much rule out going out the way we came in."  
  
The roar of the flames was only getting louder and the smoke thicker, but Zimm didn't appear to be too concerned. She gestured to the smoke covered ceiling vaguely and tried to stand.  
  
"There's a window up there somewhere," she answered, pulling Dib up with her into the smoke filled room. "That's how I planned on escaping. It should be just big enough to fit through."  
  
After much panic, Dib was able to locate and open the window without incident. It was indeed just big enough to fit through, and for once he was happy to have such a skinny build. He looked over to Zimm, who was currently struggling to breathe in the room encased in smoke.  
  
"Here it is!" he declared. "I'll give you a boost up, okay?"  
  
He guided Zimm towards him in the dense smoke and through the window. As soon as she was out, she extended a blood soaked hand to him and helped him through to safety. Both of them finally collapsed on the ground of the skool parking lot, worn out both physically and emotionally.  
  
The sirens of fire trucks blared in the distance to Dib's immense relief. He looked over to the girl collapsed beside him and smiled wearily.  
  
"You had me worried for a moment there," he whispered, to which the girl smiled back at him.  
  
"Nah," she answered, for once in her two lives feeling content with the way her life was. "I knew what I was doing all along. You're crazy."  
  
It took emergency crews hours to extinguish the fires that had ravaged the hi-skool. Thousands of dollars worth of damage had been done to the building, and the skool had to be closed temporarily for repairs. This news excited both the students and select teachers, particularly those in the sociology department. Police had been unable to find any evidence of the arsonist responsible for the damage, as all evidence had been licked up by the destructive flames. Students began circulating rumors of a shadowy figure lurking in the parking lot with a lighter, turning the mystery arsonist into the thing of legends, something that immensely irritated frustrated Police workers.  
  
As for the real arsonist, she ended up fairly well, considering what could have happened. The cut on Zimm's head wasn't severe enough to land her in the hospital, and after a few stitches and a lecture from the principal about basic fire safety, she was free to enjoy the imposed vacation along with her fellow students. Naturally she chose to spend it with Dib.  
  
Together they were working on moving forward from their past, and learning to enjoy the hours together that other people took for granted. For the first time in their lives, duty was non-existent and though it was a change for them to get used to, they wouldn't have life be any other way.  
  
Zimm, for her part was even beginning to get used to the idea of being human. Sure, her body wasn't the perfect Irken machine it had been, but there were some advantages to being human. Dib was actually coaxing her into some human activities that she'd been terrified to been think about doing before and to her surprise, she actually liked most of them. Still, there was one activity that he was constantly nagging her to try, to which she always refused.  
  
"Come on, Zimm! Just give it a try! You'll love it, I promise."  
  
The red-eyed girl stared at her soul mate as if he'd gone crazy. And maybe he had. She curled her toes around the cement edge before her and stared into the crystal clear abyss that awaited her. She shivered and turned to Dib reluctantly.  
  
"I...I can't," she whined. "Dib! You can't make me."  
  
Dib sighed heavily as he stared at the girl shivering in her bathing suit.  
  
"It's only a pool," he reminded her gently, feeling a bit cold himself in his swimming trunks. "It isn't a war, it isn't some horrific battle. It's only water."  
  
Red eyes glared at him in return. Somehow he doubted that even the fact that it was his own personal pool with safety precautions that his own father had designed would ease her mind. She really did despise water.  
  
"I'm not doing it," she declared. "I won't."  
  
Dib got a weird look on his face that Zimm didn't trust for a moment.  
  
"What?"  
  
Without warning, the boy backed up, and then ran forward into the pool, taking Zimm in with him. She clawed and dug and squealed, but nothing could reverse her watery fate. Both of them plunged into the clear water, tangled up in each other.  
  
Zimm was the first to surface, waving her arms wildly and wailing. To this, Dib could only laugh.  
  
"Calm down, Zimm," he teased. "Water can't burn human skin, remember?"  
  
Zimm immediately ceased her flailing at this reminder and began to calm down.  
  
"Right," she repeated, still eyeing the water suspiciously. "It doesn't hurt. Water isn't my enemy."  
  
Dib laughed and ran his hands through his wet, tangled hair as he bobbed in the water. He separated a section of hair and molded it into an imitation scythe on top of his head.  
  
"What do you think?" he grinned, as Zimm splashed feebly in his direction. "Look familiar?"  
  
"Too familiar," Zimm agreed, wading uneasily toward him and ruffling his hair back to its normal, non-scythed style. "I think it looks perfect just the way it was."  
  
Dib smiled and pulled Zimm closer to him pensively as he gazed up into the sunny sky.  
  
"What do you think we're missing out on?" he asked thoughtfully. "I mean, what if we never got a second chance together? We've wasted seventeen years that we could have spent in paradise. Do you ever wonder what heaven's like, or what we're missing?"  
  
Zimm broke his pensive line of thought with a quick kiss. She wrapped her arms tightly around him, relying on him to support her as they moved towards deeper water.  
  
"You think too much," she teased, gazing deeply into the vivacious amber she loved so dearly. "This is our afterlife and as long as you're here with me, I'll always be in paradise. What would heaven be without you?"  
  
Her lips met his again, each sensation feeling as new and as magical as it had when he had kissed her for the first time under the stars nearly seventeen years ago. It didn't matter to her that she was surrounded by the greatly feared water she hated, or that she would be bound in this human body under a human lifespan. All that mattered was the promise that Dib would be by her side for however long they both had to live. As long as they had each other, and they were free from the rigid control that had sent them to the grave in the first place, paradise held no allure for them, as they had already found it in each other.  
  



End file.
